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Let us assume provisionally the correctness of the textual readings, and consider the geographical bearings of (a), (d), and (f). From (d), which corresponds with (c), it is plain that the Chronicler, or the compiler from whom he drew, identified Zarethan and Zeredah. From (f) we may at least infer that Zererah (?) lay to the S. of Abel-meholah. A more definite result is gained from (c), where (if the text is in the main correct) it is stated that Zarethan was situated near Succoth in the Jordan valley. From (b) no inference is possible in the present state of the text.

A still more important passage is Josh. 3:16 (a). We learn from it that Zarethan lay beside the city called Adam or Adamah (see ADAM, 1). Between Adam or Adamah and Succoth this passage (see JERICHO, 4), together with 1 K. 7:46, suggests that there was a ford by which the main road crossed the Jordan, and such a ford there is near the Jisr ed-Damieh, at the confluence of the Jabbok and the JORDAN (q.v., 7). We must therefore at any rate reject all forms of the theory that Zarethan, which lay beside that city, was in the vicinity of Beth-shean. 2 More acceptable geographically is the view of Van de Velde, who connects Zarethan with the lofty Karn Tsartabeh (the joa3o [STRB'] of the Mishna), 3 the great landmark of the Jordan valley, W. of Jisr ed-Damieh. To this we shall return presently.

1 Der Char, der Alex. Uebers. des B. Jos., 17.

2 In PEFQ, 1874, p. 182, Conder finds a trace of the name in the 'Ain Zahrah and the Tulul Zahrah, 3 mi. W. of Beisan. At this point the opposite cliffs approach so closely that a blockage of the river (such as a shock of earthquake might occasion) would leave its bed temporarily dry. Tyrwhitt Drake (PEFQ, 1875, p. 31) thought of Tell Sarem, 3 mi. S. of Beisan ; but he relied on LXX{A}'s corrupt reading ariapa.fi [siaram] in 1 K. 7:46.

We pass on to the difficult passage marked above as (e). It is plausible to infer from the fact that LXX{L} places Jeroboam's residence at the time of his son's illness at <rapeipa [sareira], whilst MT gives the name as Tirzah (1 K. 14:17), that the true name of Jeroboam's city was Tirzah. It is very possible, however, that both Zererah and TIRZAH (q.v.) conceal some other name, and if our [Che.'s] view of Solomon's reign and of the extraction of Jeroboam is correct (see SOLOMON), the name underlying them is ZAREPHATH (q. v. ). This would not, however, justify us in substituting at once Zarephath for Zarethan in (a), (b}, (c), (d), and (f). The text of these passages urgently needs to be examined with a more searching criticism. The claims of the Karn Tsartabeh deserve at least a hearing (cp JERICHO, 2), and if this site be adopted Abel-meholah will probably be the oasis of Karawa, N. of Tsartabeh. See JERICHO, 2. It is not necessary to assume that Tsartabeh and Tsarethan are connected as names. The question is purely geographical.

'The top of the mountain is a cone, artificially shaped, and some 270 ft. high. On all sides but the west this is practically unapproachable ; on the west a trench has been cut, and the saddle thus made lower'. 'The ruins on the summit consist of a central structure with a surrounding wall, and of an aqueduct with cisterns. An old road leads up from the south, with rock-cut steps in one place'. 'The general appearance of the place is that of a fortress'. (PEFM 3:396-397)

We must not, however, treat this as more than a provisional and (in spirit) conservative conjecture, and it may be permissible to refer in advance to the treatment of passages containing Zererah in Crit. Bib. See also SUCCOTH, and cp Buhl, Pal. 181.

(o ZHAooTHc)- the Greek equivalent of the Semitic o KANANAIOC [o kananaios] (see CANANAEAN). Apart from the use of the word in a theological sense (cp e.g. 1 Cor. 14:12, frjXwral Trvevfjidruv [zelootai pneumatoon] [= weviJa.TiKG)v [pneumatikoon]], zealous, or emulous, of spirits [= spiritual gifts] ; and the OT use of N3p, kanna, of God's zeal for the keeping of the law, etc., Ex. 20:5, 34:14), it is applied distinctively to a sect whose tenets are virtually identical with those of the ASSASSINS (q.v.), of whom they are indeed the forerunners. As such it occurs only twice in the NT (Lk. 6:1,5 Acts 1:13, AV ZELOTES) with reference to SIMON (q.v. no. 5]). For Hai/ai/cucs [kananaios] see Mt. 10:4, Mk. 3:18.

Of this sect JUDAS of Galilee was at one time a leader. Against the view that the author of the Assumptio Mosis was a zealot (Schur. GVI 2:635), see APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE, 65.

1, 2. Assigned to the Benjamite (see BENJAMIN, 9) clan BERIAH (1 Ch. 8:15, afa0o/3ia [azababia] [B], . . . Sta [azabadia] [A]), but in v. 17 to ELPAAL. The context probably refers [not] to the Negeb. The names are very nearly all unmistakably [not] Jerahmeelite; 'Gath', as often, may have grown out of a mutilation of 'Rehoboth' (Che.).

5. b. Ishmael, ruler of house of Judah (2 Ch. 19:11, <Jo/38[]ias [BA], a/3ataf [L]). Possibly originally the same as

6. The Levite who with others was sent to the cities of Judah with the book of the mrt rrnn (2 Ch. 17:8, a[e]ias [zabd[e]ias] [BAL]). The neighbouring names suggest [no] connection with the Negeb (Che.).

(POT, ZEBEE [BXARTL] ; 'victima, sive hostia', Jer. OS 49:9) a Midianite king or chieftain, mentioned with Zalmunna in the story of Gideon (Judg. 8:5-21 ; cp Ps. 83:11 [83:12]). Just as Zalmunna corresponds to Oreb (the vowels in both names are unoriginal) in the parallel narrative, so Zebah corresponds to Zeeb.

The originals of the two former names are probably [not] Ishmael and 'Arab; the common original of the two latter may be Zehib 'the long-haired'. See GIDEON, OREB, ZALMON, 2, ZALMUNNA.

(N^at, as if 'bought', from Aram. J2T, 83, cp Palm. N32TC, {1} but perhaps really a popular corruption of SxyCE" [the h [L] in which name is often corrupted in the mouth of the people into j (Che.)] ; cp also Ass.-Aram. 1037 ; Hilprecht gives the Jewish name Zabina from Nippur, fifth century; (avfiiva. [zanbina] [B], fafiftfiva [zambeina] [X], om. A, gtfievti [zebeini] [L]), one of the b'ne Nebo (i.e. Nadabu ? - see NEBO iii. 2) who joined in the league against alien marriages; Ezra 10:43-44

i. The valley of Zeboim (DT2-Vn i| ; rA i THN c&MCiN [gai tes samein] [B] ; om. A ; P-AIAN THN CA.B&IN [gaian tes sabain] [L])- a locality, apparently E. of Michmash, mentioned in the description of the path taken by one of the plundering bands of the Philistines (1 S. 13:18). The passage should perhaps read thus, 'another band took the direction of the Gilgal 2 which looks down upon the valley of Zeboim toward the wilderness'. The 'wilderness' is thought to consist of the summits and precipitous sides of the mountains between the central district of Benjamin and the Jordan valley. There Grove, in 1858, found a wild gorge bearing the name of Shakk-ed-Daba - i.e., 'ravine of hycenas', which exactly corresponds to the Hebrew name. Up this gorge, which is N. of the point at which the Wady el-Kelt enters the Jordan valley, runs the path by which Grove was conduc-tiM from Jericho to Mukhmas (Smith's DB (1) 3, 1819). Marti however (ZDPV 7:125+), thinks of the Wady Abu Daba, a lateral valley which joins the Wady el-Keit from the S. , and makes the plausible suggestion that in ancient times the present Wady el-Kelt bore the appellation 'Valley of hyaenas', which now survives only in smaller gorges. Cp G. A. Smith, HG, 291 ; Buhl, Pal. 98.

(^31, zeBoyA [BAL]), a Shechemite, 'the ruler' (~)L") of the city in the time of Abimelech, represented in the artful speech of Gaal as a mere officer (Tp3) of the king, Judg. 9:28+, See ABIMELECH, GAAL, and cp We. IJG, 27.

A late writer adds the name of Zebulun in his reference (Is. 8:23b) to the deportation of Tiglath pileser described in 2 K. 15:29 (see NAPHTALI, 3). The 'land of Zebulun', he says, had shared the dark fate of the 'land of Naphtali'. Only in one other place, however, do we hear of a land of Zebulun (see 7). The real territorial name may have been Naphtali (see NAPHTALI, 2, end, 4). One of the sources of Josh., indeed, seems to have known of twelve towns (Josh. 19:15b) {1} which were regarded as Zebulunite. Whether, purposely, however, or accidentally, only five of the names have been preserved (see section 9i).

Even the form of the name is rather uncertain. In the Hebrew consonantal text it is spelled in three ways (traditionally vocalised Zebulun [hat over 2nd u], Zebulun [hat over 1st u], and Zebulun [hat over both u]; see above, begin.), the first of which would suggest a form Ziblon like Shim'on, SIMEON (q.v. 8). MT, however, vocalises them alike, with a full vowel between the last two radicals : zebul.

i. The word zebul (Ba. NB 129) without the nominal termination, is always written 731 [ZBL], zebul (without 1), like DN3 ID, whereas 7?33 [ZBVL] as constantly has the [V]. The scriptio defectiva may, however, be simply because zebul was an archaic word. Even if the old pronunciation was zebul [no accent on u] (not zebul), which would according to traditional pronunciation have given zebol (like "UD etc.), the addition of the termination to zebol would give zebul-, just as manos becomes menusah. On the other hand, if the second vowel was o, the name might be from zubal ; cp Zubala, a place in lat. 29.5, 18 mils from el-KA' in the Jauf (D. H. Muller, Hamdani's Geog. Sudarabiens, 183:24-25).

ii. Names ending in -on are common (see SIMEON, 8, and cp ZION). Not so names in -un. Jeshurun and Jeduthun are no doubt exactly parallel ; but till the literary history of those words is more firmly established they afford no sure basis for comparison. 2

Unless the -on of the Greek Zaboulon is due to assimilation to the Greek termination of that form, which is unlikely, since the o is preserved in the Greek form of the gentilics (see begin.), the name must in the second century B.C. have been pronounced Zabulon. It should be noted, however, that Josephu* twice gives the name without the termination -on (see above, begin.). Moreover, would not an original on have become en (cp REUBEN, 9 i.)?

1 So MT and LXX{L}; LXX{BA} avoids the resulting discrepancy by omitting the clause.

If the name was pronounced at all like Zebulon it is difficult not to connect it with the divine name Baal-zebul (see Skipwith, JQR, 11242 [1899], and cp BAALZEBUB, 3); cp the Punic name (fem.) 73IN7J73 [BAL'ZBL] (CIS 1:158:1-2, from Tharrus). and 73101? [ShMZBL] (inscription from Citium, 1. 4 : Nold. ZA 9:400-405), and see below, section 6. If the noun ZBL designates a lofty mansion, especially for a god (see 4), it is difficult not to think of the mountain referred to in Dt. 33:19 (see section 6), especially as the mountain names Lebanon, Sirion, Hermon all end in -on (cp Jebel Hauran and Zion). Zebulun would then be, in a modified sense, a geographical name, like Ephraim and, perhaps, Naphtali. 1

Of course there is no suggestion of that kind in Gen. There we seem to have, as often, two 'explanations' of the name (Gen. 30:29). Yahwe had presented Leah (30:29aA) with a noble gift (zebed, as if the name were Zebudon [E?]) ; or her husband (ba'al), in consideration of Leah's having presented him with a sixth son, would act (30:29aB) in a certain way : MT 37"31 [YZBLNY] (transliterated by Jerome iezbuleni), the meaning of which is uncertain, as the verb occurs nowhere else.

If zabal meant 'lift up' in Hebrew, 3731 [YZBLNY] in Gen. 30:20 would mean will honour me. The person indeed, writer or copyist, to whom we owe the present text of Gen. 49:13 seems to have given ZBL its now traditional meaning of 'dwell' (cpjre"); on the other hand 730^ in v. 15 (Issachar) suggests the Assyr. zabalu (see next section, mid.).

The history of the district inhabited by Zebulun was eventful enough (cp NAPHTALI, 3, ISSACHAR, 4-6, GALILEE, 2, JIPHTAH-EL). It felt the heavy tread of Thothmes III. (see the list of places, above), and became a part of the Egyptian empire. Burna-Buryash, the Babylonian king (about 1400), regarded the district as in the Pharaoh's (Amenhotep IV.) land, and complained to him that his agents had been maltreated at Hi-in-na-tu-ni (see HANNATHON) ; and letter 196 tells that its governor had rescued Lapaya and sent him home (31-32). What elements were united in the population of the district in the times referred to in the earliest notices in the OT we cannot say. On a famous occasion they are said to have manifested a noble valour (Judg. 5:20) led by their leaders (v. 14b). {1} Cp also 46:10, and see NAPHTALI, 3. According to J (Judg. 1:30) Zebulun was not able to expel the Canaanites from Kitron and Nahalol (section 9i.) ; but they had to join the labour gangs. 2 It should be noted, however, that whilst a similar statement is made about the Naphtalite Canaanites in v. 33, in Gen. 49:15 the subject of the sentence is an Israelite tribe (cp below, n. 3) : it is the Issacharites themselves that join the gangs. Or should the last couplet of v. 15 (Issachar) belong to v. 14 (Zebulun)? rno 1 ? 'to bear' (or should we read jatV) would then be a play on the name Zebulun, if ^31 [ZBL] in Hebrew really meant 'to carry' (cp above, 4, end). Moreover it is not at all certain that the subjects to the various verbs in Judg. 1:27-36 are original ; they may in some cases be incorrectly supplied. 3 We cannot tell how the newcomers came to terms with those who were already in possession. According to the 'Blessing of Jacob' indeed Zebulun plants himself on the sea coast (Gen. 49:13). At a much later time, too, 'the way of the sea' (QTJ TVI) is a synonym for Zebulun or Naphtali. In Judg. 5:17 the saying is transferred to Asher (cp Gunkel, Gen. (2) 425). The ideas which underlay these statements are lost to us. 4 The transit traffic was no doubt important. On the via marts from Damascus across the upper Jordan at Jisr el-banal and down through Galilee to the coast see Schumacher, Jaulan, 55, and PEFQ, Ap. 1889, p. 78 f. , GASm. HG 4:25-30. This same overland traffic may be what is referred to in the grandiloquent terms of the saying in the 'Blessing of Moses' (Dt. 33:18-19) :

'The abundance of the seas do they suck

And the hidden things of the sand. ...' 5

No doubt the Testament of Zebulun has much to tell about successful fishing, and Targ. Onk. speaks even of subduing provinces with ships, 6 whilst Talm. Shabb. 26, refers to the wealth derived from traffic in purple dyes (cp the Issacharite TOLA and PUAH : see ISSACHAR 7), to which Targ. pseudo-Jon, adds the making of glass. The view suggested above, however, is perhaps more historical. Stucken, accepting the references to maritime life, connects Zebulun with the sign Capricornus (MVG, 1902, p. 189).

Dt. 33:19a, on the other hand, contains a couplet (see next g) which suggests that the population was mixed. The Aramaean element must have become strong. There would no doubt, however, be a strong Israelite party. It seems to have been able to make its voice heard (see JONAH, GATH-HEPHER). On the possibility that 'a greater than Jonah' also came from a Zebulunite town see NARARETH [sic]. The connection of Galilee with Judaea in later times (see GALILEE, 3, NAPHTALI, 3) seems to be reflected in Ps. 68:27 [68:28] (chiefs of Zebulun, chiefs of Naphtali). 7 On Zebulunite 'judges' see below, 7.

1 Credit is given them for a share in another struggle (Gideon-Jerubbaal) in the present text of Judg. 6:35b, but not in 7:23.

2 DC is the gang of the corvee, not the labour. Cp conversely the Assyr. idiom amel za-bi-il ku-du-ri used of the corvee, not the gang.

3 Cp for example how Targ. Jer. has inverted the saying in Gen. 49:15b referred to above.

4 Gen. 49:13 has been emended and will be emended again and again. It seems to contain doublets. N1.11 is hardly possible.

How Dt. 33:19a was meant to be read is uncertain; but it appears to tell of comings of many to some mountain 1 where sacrifices were offered. If there was a religious fair, not at all an unlikely thing, 2 it would explain the inflow of wealth. What the mountain referred to is it is impossible to guess (cp ISSACHAR, 2): 3 we may only be sure that it was not, as the Targum imagined, Zion. It must have been some mountain not far from Esdraelon. Was it perhaps the mountain where in the Elijah story the sacrifices were offered ? Was the Baal whose defeat was witnessed by Ahab known as Baal-zebul ? Ahab's wife is said to have been called Jezebel. His son, too, when ill sent to inquire of Baal-zebul. No doubt, as the story now reads, Baal-zebul was the god (LXX{L} + trpocr 6x01^/^0 [prosochthisma] = ppr) of Ekron. That, however, may be a gloss (or does Ekron come from Jokneam, on the edge of Carmel ?) : we have no knowledge anywhere else of such a god at Ekron. The embellished tale of Elijah calling down fire on the messengers may be a very late accretion (Be. Ki. ); but the mountain on which the prophet (originally Elisha?) was said to have been found sitting by the messengers of the oracle-seeking king must surely have been some well-known sacred eminence. May it not have been the height of Baal-zebul ? And may that not have been the mountain of Zebulun of Dt. 33:19a ?

Baal-zebul would then naturally suggest the Baal-lebanon of CIS 1 5, which Jensen identifies with the god Amurru, 'lord of the mountain' (bel Shadi : ZA 11:305) - the Aramaeans expressly say that Ahab's god is a 'god of the mountains' (c % nn TtSx) - a west-Semitic form of the storm-god Ramman. Ramman, in fact, shares with Shamash the title of bel-biri (5 R 63:2, 63:35b), 'oracle-god', and as 'god of the storm-flood' (bel abubi) he wields both the lightning (1 K. 18:38) and the axe (cp 2 K. 6:4-7 ?) (Zimmern, KAT (3) 1:433, 1:447-448). When Elisha is hard pressed by the Aramaeans it is the mountain 4 that is seen to be full of chariots of fire (2 K. 6:17). Was it, in the original form of the story, earth from that sacred mountain that the Rimmon-worshipper wanted (2 K. 5:17) to insure his success (2 K. 5:1aB) ? That the holy mountain was identified locally need not prevent the prevalence of a less concrete, more mythological, idea (SINAI, CONGREGATION [MOUNT OF], BAAL-ZEBUB).

Of the place-names connected with Zebulun, Rimmon is not the only one to suggest a religious cult. On a possible connection of Bethlehem 5 with Lahamu, see ELHANAN ( 2, end). On suggested traces of 'Athe and Katsin see ETH-KAZIN. Cp von Gall, Altisrael. Kultstatten, 124-126.

1 For 7i7 LXX reads f^o\odpcv(rov<n.v [exolothreusousin] - i.e., either rp,-| (Josh. 23:5-6) or cinn (often), or (Ball) jt"in - but the Greek text is not to be preferred.

3 It may be noted, however, that the boundaries of Zebulun, Naphtali, and Issachar are represented as having met at Tabor (cp TABOR, 2). Cp Hos. 5:1, and see v. Gall, Altisraelitische Kultstatten, 124-125

4 The scene seems in the present text to be laid at Dothan.

5 Dodo the Bethlehemite can hardly be supposed to belong to N. Palestine; otherwise the Zebulunite Bethlehem might be referred to in connection with the suggestion in ISSACHAR, 2.

How much significance, if any, is to be attached to the fact that Zebulun is classed with Issachar as a Leah tribe whilst Naphtali goes with Dan as a Bilhah-Rachel tribe, is disputed (see RACHEL, 1, ZILPAH, 2-3, and cp TRIBES, 11+). The Bilhites, Naphtali and Dan, may have been regarded as farther from the centre; they were not in historical times of any importance. Zebulun, indeed, is not much more prominent. None of the great actors in the Palestinian drama is assigned to the tribe (see, however, 5 end). Its brother tribe, however, may have played some part in the history of Israel (see ISSACHAR, 4) : it is mentioned before Zebulun not only in the story of Jacob's family but also in most of the lists of the tribes. It is rather remarkable, therefore, that the order is reversed in five more important passages: the three poetical pieces (Judg. 5, Gen. 49, Dt. 33), and the two places dealing with the partition of Canaan (Nu. 34:19-29 Josh. 19). {1} Cp ISSACHAR, i, end ; TRIBES, 10, iii.

On the assumption of the early arrival of Issachar and Zebulun, their being nevertheless 'younger' than the more southern tribes has been explained by Steuernagel as due to their arriving later at their final seat (Einwanderung, 33c). {2} In fact he thinks he has found evidence that the Zebulunites settled in mid-Palestine for a time before moving northwards. The 'judge' Elon (Judg. 12:11-12) is obviously the eponym of a city or clan (or both) Elon. In any case he is said to have been buried in a city the name of which is vocalised in MT as AIJALON (q.v. , 2), but should perhaps be ELON (q.v., 2). No such town being assigned to Zebulun in Josh. 19:10-16, Steuernagel supposes that the Elon meant is the Elon assigned in 19:43 to Dan, and that the words in the land of Zebulun were added to 'Elon' in Judg. 12:12 by a copyist who wished to exclude this very identification, which seemed to him obviously incorrect. Steuernagel, on the contrary, thinks that the excluded interpretation is correct, and therefore holds that Zebulun, like NAPHTALI (q.v. , 1), halted in central Palestine for a time. He admits, however, that the identification he assumes is precarious. It is; moreover, the assertion that no town Elon is assigned to Zebulun in Josh, must be qualified by reference to the incompleteness of the list of towns (see below, 9i).

It has been customary to assign to Zebulun the 'judge' Ibzan on the ground of his being called a Bethlehemite. Winckler, however, holds that the Bethlehem intended is the southern town, which at that time would be a part of 'Benjamin' (see above, col. 2583 n. r). On the other hand it is difficult to dissociate Ibzan (|X2N) from Ebez (j 2N : Josh. 19:20), a town assigned to Issachar (cp ABEZ), 3 between which and Zebulun there was probably no clear demarcation.

P's genealogy of Zebulun is slight : 4 it contains three names 5 - Sered (or Seded?) and Jahleel, which we can hardly venture to distinguish from the towns Sarid and Nahalal of Josh. 19:10, 19:15, in spite of the differences in the spelling, 6 and Elon, on which see above (preceding section). Gaddiel, too, the Zebulunite 'spy', was perhaps assigned to one of these three (Sodi, TiD = i( )-iD : Nu. 13:10).

Is Parnach, -313, the 'father' of Elizur the Zebulunite delegate to survey W. Palestine (Nu 34:25), a corruption of the same name? Helon (?Sn) the 'father' of the Zebulunite census-delegate (Nu. 1:9, 2:7, 2:24, 2:29, 10:16) may come from Elon.

1 The accidental omission of Zebulun in 1 Ch. 2-9 and of Issachar in Judg. 1:27-36 may be in some way connected with this change of order.

2 Land, on the other hand, speaking of the name Zebulun, 'the most difficult to explain', says (assuming that zabal means 'dwell'), 'Can the tribe at some time or other have been so named by its neighbours or kindred because it had a fixed abode earlier than they?' (De Gids, Oct. 1871, p. 21, n. i).

3 Similarly Kartan is assigned in Josh. 21:32 to Naphtali, Kartah in v. 34 to Zebulun.

i. Towns. - Of the five towns remaining out of the list of twelve originally given as we have seen (section 1) in Josh. 19 (v. 15), the only one that can he identified with certainty is BETHLEHEM (q.v. : Bet-Lahm, 7 mi. NW of Nazareth). On the other four, of which Nahalal has been referred to (section 8), and Shimron is of interest in connection with the Sa-me-na of Esarhaddon (see SIMEON, 6 iii.), see KATTATH, NAHALAL, SHIMRON, and IDALAH. As often, two of the five (Kattath and Nahalal, called Nahalol) are probably the towns which J tells us Zebulun did not secure (Judg. 1:30). P adds the information that of forty-eight cities assigned to the Levites four were Zebulunite (Josh. 21:35) : the Nahalal just mentioned, two of the towns to be referred to immediately (Jokneam, which, according to Josh. 19:11, did not belong to Zebulun, and Dimnah = Rimmonah) and KARTAH (Kartan in Josh. 21:32 is Naphtalite).

ii. Boundary. - According to Josephus (Ant. 5:1:22, section 84) the Zebulunites were settled as far as Gennesaret (fj.^XP l YfvijffapiSos [mechri genesaridos]) and about Carmel and the sea. The delimitation of territory in Josh. 19:10-14 cannot be really made out. The line is given first westwards (v. 10-11), and then eastwards (v. 12-13), of a place already referred to (section 8) called Sarid in MT, which may be Tell Shadud (see SARID). Westward the line is drawn past 'Dabbesheth' (see MAKALAH, DABBESHETH) to the wady that is before Jokneam (Tell Kaimun). Eastward it is drawn to CHISLOTH-TABOR (Iksal) and on to DABERATH (Deburiyeh), which belonged, according to 21:28, to Issachar, thence, if the text is sound and we do not suppose a fusion of two accounts, turning sharp W. to JAPHIA (Yafa), only to recover a position N. of Iksal but W. of Deburiyeh at GATH-HEPHER (el-Meshhed), and continue a course due N. (see ETH-KAZIN) to RIMMON [RV ; L om.] (Rummaneh) on the S. margin of the plain of Buttauf, across which it continues (see NEAH, HANNATHON) to the 'valley of JIPHTAH-EL' (q.v.), somewhere near Tell Jafat, due E. of Haifa. The intention appears to be to give the southern and eastern boundary. {1} Real definite frontiers there cannot have been, as the discrepant data show (cp also ISSACHAR, NAPHTALI, ASHER). Generally, Zebulun must have lain NW. of Issachar, W. of the southern part of Naphtali, and S(E). of Asher. On the exuberant fertility and busy life of the country, see GASm. IJG chap. 20, and cp GALILEE, 4.

H. W. H.

1 Is the omission of a western boundary to be connected in some way with the references to the sea in Gen. 49:14, Dt. 33:18-19?

(irrpT, more often rrpT, as if 'Yahwe remembers' [ 32, 52] ; but the original form of Zechariah was probably Zichri, which (see ZICHRI) is a clan-name. A study of the names with which 'Zechariah' is grouped (e.g. , Meshelemiah, from Ishme'eli) strongly confirms this [Che.]; ZAX^P ^c] [BXAQL] whence the Graecised form ZACHARIAS [q.v.]).

1. b. Berechiah, b. Iddo (also loosely, b. Iddo), a prophet who, together with Haggai, is our best authority for the religious state of the early post-exilic community at Jerusalem, and is the author of Zech. 1-8. To these prophets the rebuilding of the temple is largely due (Ezra 5:1, 6:14). It is probably this Zechariah who is mentioned as a priest in Neh. 12:16 (cp no. 11).

2. Son of Jeroboam II., king of Israel, and the fifth and last king of the house of JEHU (2 K. 14:29, 15:8-12; AV ZACHARIAH, afaptas [azarias] [B in 1429, A]). He reigned but six months, and was then slain by Shallum b. Jabesh in IBLEAM (q.v. ). On the date of his accession, see CHRONOLOGY, 34.

12. One of Jehoshaphat's commissioners for teaching the Law (2 Ch. 17:7). See BEN-HAIL.

13. An Asaphite Levite (2 Ch. 20:14). [ = 20:26, see MATTHANIAH.]

14. A son of Jehoshaphat (2 Ch. 21:2).

15. b. Jehoiada, a reforming chief priest in the reign of Joash, who was stoned to death in the temple court, at the king's command (2 Ch. 24:20+, a^ afitat [azarias] [BA] Jos. Ant. 9:8:6 ; cp references in Jer. Talm. Taanith, 69:1-2, Bab. Talm. Sanhedrin, 96:2, Lightfoot, Temple-Service, 36). It was a Jewish saying that the blood stains were never washed away until the temple was burnt at the captivity. The Targ. on Lam. 2:20 ('Shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of Yahwe?') refers this especially to Zechariah, but through a confusion calls him the son of Iddo. On the possible reference to Zechariah's death in Mt. 23:35, Lk. 11:51, see ZACHARIAS (9).

16. A prophet who, according to the Chronicler, was as influential with Uzziah as the priest Jehoiada had been with Joash (2 Ch. 26:5). Probably 'in the vision of God' (l. c.) should rather be 'in the fear of God' (see RVmg) - i.e. for n%tna we should read rmT3 (LXX, Tg. , Pesh., Ar., and some MSS). According to Hitzig the author of Zech. 9-11.

17. An Asaphite Levite (2 Ch. 29:13, aapta? [azarias] [B]).

18. A Kohathite Levite (2 Ch. 34:12).

19. A 'ruler of the temple' in the time of Josiah (2 Ch. 35:8) ; according to Bertheau, 'priest of the second order', cp 2 K. 25:18, Jer. 52:24. In 1 Esd. 1:8, ZACHARIAS.

Among the lists of the exiles who returned in Ezra-Neh. we find seven men of this name :

27. b. Jeberechiah, a contemporary of Isaiah (8:2), who served with Uriah the priest, as a 'trustworthy witness' in connection with the sign Maher-shalal-hashbaz. Some identify him with the father of Abijah, 3 ; others, with the Levite, 17. Hitzig makes him the author of the anonymous chaps. 12-14 of Zechariah, Bertholdt, the author of chaps. 9-11. Observe that the name of his father is essentially the same as that of the father of the well-known prophet [1].

Zechariah, son of Berechiah, son of Iddo, or by contraction son of Iddo (see ZECHARIAH, 1), appeared as a prophet in Jerusalem along with HAGGAI (q.v. ), in the second year of Darius Hystaspis (520 B.C.), to warn and encourage the Jews to address themselves at length to the restoration of the temple, which then still lay in ruins. Supported by the prophets, Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah, and Joshua, the high priest, set about the work, and the elders of Judah built and the work went forward (Ezra 5:1-2, 6:14). The first eight chapters of the book of Zechariah exactly fit into this historical setting. They are divided by precise chronological headings into three sections (a) l:1-6, in the eighth month of the second year of Darius; (b) 1:7-6:15, on the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month of the same year; (c) 7-8, on the fourth day of the ninth month of the fourth year of Darius.

The first section is a preface containing exhortation in general terms.

The main section is the second (b), containing a series of night visions, the significant features of which are pointed out by an angel who stands by the prophet and answers his questions :

1:7-17. The divine chariots and horses that make the round of the world by Yahwe's orders return to the heavenly palace and

report that there is still no movement among the nations, no sign of the Messianic crisis. Seventy years have passed, and Zion and the cities of Judah still mourn. 'Sad' news! but Yahwe gives a comfortable assurance of his gracious return to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of his temple.

1:18-21 [2:1-4]. Four horns, representing the hostile world-power that oppresses Israel and Jerusalem, are routed by four smiths.

2:1-13 [2:5-17]. The new Jerusalem is laid out with the measuring line. It is to have no walls, that its population may

not be limited, and it needs none, for Yahwe is its protection. The catastrophe of Babel (the land of the north) is near to come; then the exiles of Ziun shall stream back from all quarters, the converted heathen shall join them, Yahwe himself will dwell in the midst of them; even now he stirs himself from his holy habitation.

3:1-10. The high priest Joshua is accused before Yahwe by Satan, but is acquitted and given rule in Yahwe's house and courts, with the right of access to Yahwe in priestly intercession. The restoration of the temple and its service is a pledge of still higher things. The promised 'branch' (or 'shoot', nOi>) the Messiah, will come ; the national kingdom is to be restored; and a time of general felicity dawns, when ever) man shall sit happy under his vine and under his fig tree. As by rights the Messianic kingdom should follow immediately on the exile, it is probable that the prophet designs to hint in a guarded way that Zerubbabel, who in all other places is mentioned along with Joshua, is on the point of ascending the throne of his ancestor David. The jewel with seven facets is already there, only the inscription has still to be engraved on it (3:9). The charges brought against the high priest consist simply in the obstacles that have hitherto hindered the restoration of the temple and its service ; and in like manner the guilt of the land (3:9) is simply the still continuing domination of foreigners.

4:1-14. Beside a lighted golden candlestick of seven branches stand two olive trees - Zerubbabel and Joshua, the two anointed ones - specially watched over by him whose seven eyes run through the whole earth. This explanation of the vision is separated from the description by an animated dialogue, not quite clear in its expression, in which it is said that the mountain of obstacles shall disappear before Zerubbabel, and that, having begun the building of the temple, he shall also bring it loan end in spite of those who now mock at the day of small beginnings.

5:1-4. A written roll flies over the Holy Land ; this is a concrete representation of the curse which in future will fall of itself on all crime, so that, e.g., no man who has suffered theft will have occasion himself to pronounce a curse against the thief (cp Judg. 17;2).

5:5-17. Guilt, personified as a woman, is cast into an ephah-measure with a heavy lid and carried from Judah to Chaldaea, where it is to have its home for the future.

6:1-8. The divine teams, four in number, again traverse the world toward the four winds, to execute Yahwe's commands. That which goes northward is charged to wreak his anger on the N. country. The series of visions has now reached its close, returning to its starting-point in 1:7+. [On the 'mountains of brass' see BRASS ; and on the colour of the horses see COLOURS.]

(6:9-15) - An appendix. Jews from Babylon have brought gold and silver to Jerusalem; of these the prophet must make a crown designed for the 'branch' who is to build Yahwe's house and sit king on the throne, but retain a good understanding with the high priest. Zerubbabel is certainly meant here, and, if the received text names Joshua instead of him (6:11), this is only a correction, made for reasons easy to understand, which breaks the context and destroys the sense and the reference of 'them both' in v. 13.

(7-9). The third section, dated from the fourth year of Darius, contains an inquiry whether the fast days that arose in the captivity are still to be observed, with a comforting and encouraging reply of the prophet.

Kosters (Herstel van Israel, 1894) laid stress upon the fact that neither in Haggai nor in Zechariah do we find the Jews in Jerusalem represented as consisting of returned exiles. The fact is as stated ; but it does not preclude us from supposing that the return of a band of exiles may have marked the starting-point of a new era of Jewish history. Few in number they indeed were, and they did not assume an exclusive attitude towards the vastly more numerous class of Jews who had remained behind in Judaea, whom, rather, on the contrary, they sought to win over to their own view, and urged to congregate in and around Jerusalem, so as to make the desolate ruins once more the focus of a new theocracy. Stade thinks that the buoyancy and joyous hopefulness which we perceive in Haggai and Zechariah may have been due to the revolt of Smerdis. {1} But such a shaking of the Persian empire after the death of Cambyses could not possibly have been predicted as still future (Hag. 26) two years after its occurrence, and at a time when it had already been almost recovered from, and, moreover, the Jews could hardly have rejoiced so heartily over it, their feelings towards the Persians being friendly. It seems more likely that the Jews heard with gladness of the conquest of Babylon - that is to say, the second - under Darius Hystaspis. The vengeance on Babylon, which Cyrus had not fully carried out, now at last seemed to be accomplished and the wrath of Yahwe against the land of the North to fulfil itself (Zech. 6:8, 2:6-7 [2:10-11]). Thereby also was quickened the more general Messianic expectation that all nations would at last acknowledge the supremacy of Yahwe.

Throughout the first eight chapters the scene is Jerusalem in the early part of the reign of Darius. Zerubbabel and Joshua, the prince and the priest, are the leaders of the community. The great concern of the time and the chief practical theme of these chapters is the building of the temple ; but its restoration is only the earnest of greater things to follow - viz., the glorious restoration of David s kingdom. The horizon of these prophecies is everywhere limited by the narrow con ditions of the time, and their aim is clearly seen. The visions hardly veil the thought, and the mode of expression is usually simple, except in the Messianic passages, where the tortuousness and obscurity are perhaps intentional. Noteworthy is the affinity between some notions evidently not framed by the prophet himself and the prologue to Job, - the heavenly hosts that wander through the earth and bring back their report to Yahwe's throne, the figure of Satan, the idea that suffering and calamity are evidences of guilt and of accusations presented before God.

1 [GVI 2:113. The revolt of Nidintu-Bel in 521 has also been suggested (Che. Jew. Rel. Life, 14).]

Passing from chaps. 1-3 to chaps. 9-14, we at once feel ourselves transported into a different world.

Yahwe's word is accomplished on Syria-Phoenicia and Philistia (HADRACH [q.v.] and Damascus are first mentioned); and then the Messianic kingdom begins in Zion, and the Israelites detained among the heathen, Judah and Ephraim combined, receive a part in it. The might of the sons of Javan is broken in battle against this kingdom (chap. 9).

After an intermezzo of three verses (10:1-3 : 'Ask rain of Yahwe, not of the diviners') a second and quite analogous Messianic prophecy follows.

The foreign tyrants fall; the lordship of Assyria and Egypt has an end ; the autonomy and martial power of the nation are restored. The scattered exiles return as citizens of the new theocracy, all obstacles in their way parting asunder as when the waves of the Red Sea gave passage to Israel at the founding of the old theocracy (10:3-12).

Again there is an interlude of three verses (11:1-3): fire seizes the cedars of Lebanon and the oaks of Bashan.

This is followed by the difficult passage about the shepherds. The shepherds (rulers) of the nation make their flock an article of trade and treat the sheep as sheep for the shambles. Therefore, the inhabited world shall fall a sacrifice to the tyranny of its kings, whilst Israel is delivered to a shepherd who feeds the sheep for those who make a trade of the flock (Jfii .T . > 33, 11:7, 11:11 = 'they that sell them', v. 5) and enters on his office with two staves, 'Favour' and 'Union'. He destroys 'the three shepherds' in one month, but is soon weary of his flock and the flock of him. He breaks the staff 'Favour' - i.e., the covenant of peace with the nations - and asks the traders for his hire. Receiving thirty pieces of silver, he casts it into the temple treasury and breaks the staff 'Union' - i.e., the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. He is succeeded by a foolish shepherd, who neglects his flock and lets it go to ruin. At length Yahwe intervenes ; the foolish shepherd falls by the sword ; two-thirds of the people perish with him in the Messianic crisis, but the remnant of one-third forms the seed of the new theocracy (11:4-17 taken with 13:7-9, according to the necessary transposition proposed by Ewald).

All this must be an allegory of past events, the time present to the author and his hopes for the future beginning only at 11:17, 13:7-9.

Chap. 12 presents a third variation on the Messianic promise. All heathendom is gathered together against Jerusalem and perishes there. Yahwe first gives victory to the countryfolk of Judah and then they rescue the capital. After this triumph the noblest houses of Jerusalem hold, each by itself, a great lamentation over a martyr 'whom they have pierced' (or 'whom men have pierced'). It is taken for granted that the readers will know who the martyr is, and the exegesis of the church applies the passage to Christ [cp HADAD-RIMMON].

Chap. 13:1-6 is a continuation of chap. 12 ; the dawn of the day of salvation is accompanied by a general purging away of idolatry and the enthusiasm of false prophets.

Yet a fourth variation of the picture of the incoming of the Messianic deliverance is given in chap. 14. The heathen gather against Jerusalem and take the city, hut do not utterly destroy the inhabitants. Then Yahwe, at a time known only to himself, shall appear with all his saints on Mount Olivet and destroy the heathen in battle, while the men of Jerusalem take refuge in their terror in the great cleft that opens where Yahwe sets his foot. Now the new era begins, and even the heathen do homage to Yahwe by bringing due tribute to the annual feast of tabernacles. All in Jerusalem is holy down to the bells on the horses and the cooking-pots [cp Crit. Bib.].

There is a striking contrast between chaps. 1-8 and chaps. 9-14. The prophecy 1-8 is closely tied to the situation and the wants of the community of Jerusalem in the second year of Darius I. , and all that it aims at is the restoration of the temple and perhaps the elevation of Zerubbabel to the throne of David. Chapters 9+ contain no trace of this historical situation and deal with quite other matters. They are more obscure and more fantastic. There are corresponding differences in style and speech; and it is particularly to be noted that, whilst the superscriptions in chaps. 1-8 name the author and give the date of each oracle with precision, those in the second part (9:1, 12:1) are without name or date. That both parts do not belong to the same author must be admitted.

Most recent critics make the second part the older. Chaps. 9-11 are ascribed to a contemporary of Amos and Hosea. about the middle of the eighth century B.C., because Ephraim is mentioned as well as Judah, and Assyria along with Egypt (10:10), whilst the neighbours of Israel appear in 9:1-2 in the same way as in Amos 1-2. That chaps. 12-14 are also pre-exilic is held to appear especially in the attack on idolatry and lying prophecy (13:1-6); bill, as this prophecy speaks only of Judah and Jerusalem, it is dated after the fall of Samaria, and is assigned to the last days of the Judaean kingdom on the strength of 12:11, where an allusion is seen to the mourning for King Josiah, slain in battle at Megiddo.

It is more likely that chaps. 9-14 all together are of much later date. These predictions have no affinity either with the prophecies of Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah, or with that of Jeremiah. The kind of eschatology which we find in Zech. 9-14 was introduced by Ezekiel, who in particular is the author of the conception that the time of deliverance is to be preceded by a joint attack of all nations on Jerusalem, in which they come to final over throw. The importance attached to the temple service, even in Messianic times (Zech. 14), implies an author who lived in the ideas of the religious commonwealth of post-exilic times. So also the use of 'Zion' as a name for the theocracy. The diaspora and the cessation of prophecy (13:1-6) are presupposed. A future king is hoped for ; but in the present there is no Davidic king, only a Davidic family standing on the same level with other noble families in Jerusalem (12:7, 12:12). The 'bastard' (mixed race) of Ashdod reminds us of Neh. 13:23+; and the words of 9:12 ('to-day, also, do I declare that I will render double unto thee') have no sense unless they refer back to the deliverance from Babylonian exile.

Whilst chaps. 9-14, are thus all later than chaps. 1-8, they are not themselves homogeneous; they fall into two well-marked divisions 9-11 and 12-14.

The latter division [12-14] contains two prophecies which are little more than a standing dogmatic formula of eschatology filled up with concrete details, and can be understood well enough (if need be) without our knowing the historical setting. The actual situation at the time of composition discloses itself only in one or two features, as, for example, when the country of Judah is contrasted with the city of Jerusalem, and the deliverance of the city comes from the country - a feature which seems to indicate the Maccabcean period.

The former division (9-11), on the other hand - which again falls into two sections, 9:1-11:3 and 11:4-7 + 13:7-9 - is much more concrete and cannot be understood at all if the date of its composition is not known. In 9:1-11:3 we find that it is the Greeks (9:13; cp JAVAN) who are the heathen power, the enemy of God, which must be overthrown before the Messiah's kingdom can come. Assyria and Egypt, which take the place of Javan in chap. 10, are the kingdom of the Seleucidae and the Ptolemies. The region of HADRACH (q.v.), Damascus, and Hamath, against which the wrath of Yahwe is, in the first instance, directed (9:1-2), is the seat, not of the old Assyrians, but of the Seleucidae.

And inasmuch as Assyria here takes precedence of Egypt, we are able to fix the date of the present section more precisely as falling somewhere within the first third of the second century B.C., for it was not till the beginning of that century that the Seleucidae became masters of Judaea (SELKUCIDAE, 7-8). The second section (11:4-17 + 13:7-9) will also be of this date ; for a right understanding of it a correct apprehension of the historical situation is still more indispensable, though, indeed, rendered very difficult not only by the bad state of the text, but also by our defective knowledge of this period of Jewish history. By the owners of the sheep who traffic in them we are to understand the Seleucid sovereigns who carried on a remunerative business in farming out their flocks to the shepherds. The shepherds are the high priests and ethnarchs of the Jews ; by the rapid and violent changes of the shepherds the events which preceded and led up to the Maccabaean revolt are denoted. They were all of them worthless whether they traced their descent from Zadok or from Tobias. At last the measure of iniquity was filled up by Menelaus, who may very well be meant by the last cruel shepherd who is to bring on the catastrophe and the judgment (11:15+). The prominent man, who is an exception to the rest, and does not come into the series, who takes upon him the office of shepherd in the interests of the flock, but gives it up when he sees that the flock is unworthy of his care, might be Hyrcanus the son of Tobias. According to the (legendary) accounts we have of him he was a man of proud disposition and lofty plans who lived in undisguised enmity with his brethren the Tobiadae, overcame them and put two of them to death, and yet was unable to hold his own in Jerusalem (Jos. Ant. 12:4:9 [section 222], ed. Niese). In any case he was a person of quite a different sort from the ordinary Jewish aristocrat. It is natural to ask how we are to suppose that at his departure he obtained his reward for having been shepherd. For, as a rule, the order was reversed and shepherds paid for the right of feeding the sheep. But this trait in the picture is more easily understood in the case of Hyrcanus, whose position was quite exceptional, than in that of the other shepherds. Perhaps his adherents may in the end have given him money to leave Jerusalem when the good understanding between them had come to an end and various external dangers were threatening. It is worth noticing that the reward received by the shepherd is cast by him into the temple-treasury (11:13) ; according to 2 Macc. 3:11, Hyrcanus, the son of Tobias, had a deposit there.

The literature of the book is cited by C. H. H. Wright, 'Zcchariah and his Prophecies' (2) 1879. See also Stade, 'Deuterozacharia' (ZATW, 1881-1882); and Wellhausen and Nowack's editions of the Minor Prophets. [Cp also G. A. Smith, Twelve Prophets, vol. 2, and PROPHECY, 47.]

Cm ; only in ace. iYViy ; rrm [Sam.]; C&RAA&K [saradak] [BL], CAA&A&K [sadadak] [A], CAAA&K [saddak] [F], Aradath [It.]), one of the points in the ideal northern frontier of Canaan according to P or the later redactor (Nu. 34:8), and also mentioned in the || passage of Ezekiel (47:15; for LXX see later). Robinson (BR 3:461 n.), Wetzstein (Reisebericht, 88), Furrer (ZDPV 8:27), Muhlau, and Socin, identify it with the the large village Tsadad, between Riblah and Palmyra (long. 37[degrees] E. ) ; but this is too far E. if it is considered that both Hamath and Damascus are meant to be excluded. It is also an objection, that the implied view of the northern frontier assumes a large part of the Lebanon district to be included within the Israelitish border. Many besides Buhl (Pal. 66) will think that this carries idealisation beyond what is probable (cp HOR, MOUNT). Van Kasteren (Rev. bibl., 1895, p. 30) adopts the reading Zerad, and plausibly identifies with Khirbet Serada, between Merj 'Ayun (where he places 'the entrance of Hamath') and Hermon, to the S. of Kh. Sanbariyeh (see SIBKAIM).

With regard to the second passage : Cornill thinks that the original reading (see LXX) must have been simply 'to the entrance of Hamath' and that 'Zedadah' (i.e., 'to Zedad') was interpolated after 'Hamath' from Nu. 34:8, '(To) Hamath' before 'Zedadah' was thus rendered useless, and so the two names changed places (see MT). The original LXX of Rzek. did not, it is assumed, contain the interpolation. The scribe who altered it simply made an insertion ; hence the existing MSS of LXX represent 'Hamath' not only after but also before 'Zedadah' (nuacreAdauua [emaseldamma] [B], Tj^aS eA. [emath'eldamma] [A], TjjiacraiAaa/uya [emasailaam'ma] [Q], afioAaai/uaS [adalaaimath] [Qmg.])

According to the view of the geographical definitions in Nu. 34 and Ezek. 47:13+ advocated elsewhere (see KIBLAH, SIBRAIM) the region referred to in the original text may have been, not the land of Canaan, but the Negeb. In that case, Mt. Hor = Mt. Jerahmeel, Hamath = Maacath, Zedad or Zerad probably = Mitstsur, and Ziphron or Sibraim (to be identified) = Zarephath. Cp ZEROR.

1. The last king of Judah (597-586), a son of JOSIAH (2 K. 24-25, 2 Ch. 36:10+; in 1 Ch. 3:15 {1}, Jer. 27:12, 28:1, 29:3, 49:34, i-" 1 *). According to 2 K. 24:17, his original name was Mattaniah ; the king of 'Babel' (^33 [BBL]) 'changed his name' to Zedekiah (Tsidkiyah) when he raised this uncle of the deposed king to the throne of Judah. This act of sovereignty is in itself probable ; cp the new name imposed by Ashur-bani-pal on Necho I. {2} (Limir-ishakku-Ashur, 'let Ashur's viceroy see'. )

The special appropriateness of the name selected is not obvious. Parallel names suggest that 'Zedekiah' (Tsidkiyah) means properly 'Zidkite', and even if we suppose (rationally enough) that, when borne by the king, it acquired the new meaning 'righteousness of Yahwe', 3 that is by no means a clear expression of Zedekiah's relation to his suzerain. No fully satisfactory explanation of this has been offered ; and yet Hebrew onomatology cannot afford to confess itself baffled. The theory that in many passages 'Babel' (^33) = 7KOrTV [jerahmeel] suggests an [flimsy] explanation. Since rp,T s n some OT passages probably miswritten for m it follows that this great race-name may possibly be represented by i-. {4} Now Tsidkiyahu, 'righteousness of Jerahmeel', is a name that might conceivably be given to a royal vassal of Jerahmeel, after he had sworn fidelity (Ezek. 17:13) to his suzerain.

Zedekiah was only twenty-one at his accession and it is probable that the queen-mother Hamutal made up by her own energy for the weakness of her son. This certainly seems to be implied by what Ezekiel says of her in one of his striking similitudes {5} (Ezek. 19:5). Whether it was so or not, there was on the part of the rulers no just political insight. Fidelity to the suzerain, and a strict maintenance of the old moral traditions of Israel, would have insured a peaceful though inglorious existence for king and people (cp Ezek. 17:6, 17:14). But the deportation of a large part of the upper class brought wealth and political power to those who had had none of the necessary training. These 'new men' soon displayed in an intensified degree the vices of the worst of their predecessors (Ezek. 22:25, 22:27, 24:6), and, with an obstinacy which it is difficult for us moderns to understand, cherished the hope of quickly throwing off the foreign yoke. Meantime those who had gone into exile with Jehoiachin looked on at a distance with mingled contempt and indignation (Ezek. 11:15, 14:22-23), and Jeremiah, not less than Ezekiel, recognised the moral incapacity of the new lords of Jerusalem.

Whether, or how far, Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, interfered in the affairs of Judah, remains obscure. The redactors of the narrative and prophetical writings certainly believed that the power which broke up the national existence was the Babylonian.

When we look beneath the surface, however, we [do not] suspect that there has been a great misunderstanding, and that, according to the extant fragments of the old Hebrew records, when restored to something [nothing] not unlike their original purity, it was the king of Jerahmeel in N. Arabia who invaded Jewish territory, who besieged and took Jerusalem, and once and again carried away its inhabitants. We do not know enough of the political condition of N. Arabia to say what nation is represented by the archaising name Jerahmeel, but assume that tiiere must have been some power capable of enforcing his will on S. Palestine. It is possible, of course, that the role of the N. Arabians was subordinate to that of the Babylonians (cp OBADIAH [BOOK], 7); but this is only a hypothesis. All that we know is that N. Arabia was for a long time regarded as the great oppressor of Israel. There is to some extent a similar problem with regard to the captivity of the northern Israelites and the subsequent invasion (or invasions) of Judah in the time of Hezekiah. We are, however, in a worse position with regard to the captivities of Judah, for we have as yet no cuneiform records of Babylonian interference with Judah at the reported times of those captivities.

1 On the strange insertion of Zedekiah in v. 16 among the sons of Jehoiakim, see Benzinger, who thinks that the author of the text may really have supposed Zedekiah to have been the son of Jehoiakim, but does not mention the possibility that the scribe may have misread the text before him. ,T~2T (Zechariah) would be a very possible name.

2 Tiele, BAG 356.

3 Cp NAMES, 36, and note also Sidki-ilu, the name of an Ass. eponym (Del. Ass. HWB 564a).

4 Cp TEBALIAH. The same explanation applies to all the names ending in or beginning with in'.

Another troublesome N. Arabian potentate was the king of Mitsrim ; here again the name is an archaism. 1 According to our [Che.'s] revised text of 2 K. 24:2 'bands' of Mitsrites had already brought Judah very low in the reign of Jehoiakim; it is to such incursions, we believe, that the so-called Scythian prophecies of Jeremiah really refer (see PROPHET, 26, end). But, according to Jer. 27:1+ (substituting for the introductory verse the passage which now appears as 28:1), {2} the king of Aram (i.e., not the great king of Jerahmeel, but some inferior king on the border of Jewish territory) and the king of Mitstsur 3 sent ambassadors to Zedekiah, to concert a revolt. Evidently a change of circumstances had occurred, and the Mitsrites were now no longer anxious for the destruction or weakening of Judah. This king of Mitstsur is no doubt [definitely not] the personage miscalled Pharaoh Hophra in the common text of Jer. 44:30. {4} For a time the [non-existent] siege of Jerusalem by the Jerahmeelites (which we refer to by anticipation) was interrupted by a friendly diversion on the part of a Mitsrite army.

It appears to be a trustworthy tradition that the prophet Jeremiah exhorted the rulers and people of Judah to abstain from any act of rebellion, and that in doing so he was diametrically opposed to prophets of the war-party, an inferior order (see JEREMIAH, 2 ; PROPHET, 24-26). We have also records of embassies of Zedekiah to the great king of S^^. {5}

What messages were carried by these embassies, we cannot of course say ; the embassies had for their primary object the conveyance of the annual tribute of Judah, 6 until the fatal year when Zedekiah rebelled.

According to Winckler (KAT (3), 278+), who holds that Zedekiah's suzerain was the king of Babylon, 7 the embassies had another most important object, viz., the bringing about of the restoration of the cultus of Yahwe in the temple, which, he thinks, was in abeyance throughout the reign of Zedekiah owing to the destruction, or at any rate the removal, of the sacred vessels. He does not, however, say that the official worship of Marduk and Nabu was introduced into the temple, or that Zedekiah's accession to the throne was without the sanctions of Yahwism. He thinks that it was only the 'orthodox, monotheistic Yahwe-cultus' which was abolished; the 'ordinary Canaanitish forms of cultus' ('no doubt partly identical with those of Zedekiah') were either allowed to remain, or, as the case might be, set up anew. And when Jeremiah (27:17) urges the people to 'serve the king of ^23 [BBL]' that they might 'live', he means, 'give up the hope of the restoration of the cultus in the sense of Josiah and of orthodoxy, and be content with what is left'. 'This', Winckler adds, 'is the precise opposite of the demands of the Yahwe-party, to which Jeremiah, as a pro-Babylonian, is absolutely opposed'. This scholar's view of Jeremiah's attitude is altogether original, and the hypothesis of the abolition of Yahwe-worship is difficult to work out. For instance, why should Zedekiah have given his support (as Winckler's interpretation of Jer. 29:3 implies that he did) to a request for milder treatment by the Babylonians, when one of the chief objects of the party in favour of this request was the restoration of Jeconiah or Jehoiachin? And is there any trace in Jeremiah or in Ezekiel of the supposed fact that the Yahwe-cult in the temple had been violently closed, or in the records of the life of Jeremiah that this enthusiast for Yahwe was 'content with what was left' after this catastrophe had occurred? Cp SHESHBAZZAR.

1 Cp Winckler, KAT (3) 141.

2 See Duhm's commentary.

3 Only two kings are meant. 'Edom' and 'Moab' should [not] be 'Aram' (Jerahmeel) and Mitstsur. 'B'ne Ammon', 'Tyre', 'Zidon' are [not] also wrong ; read 'B'ne Jerahmeel' and 'Mitstsur' (see Crit. Bib.).

4 jnan is a dittographed njTS, and this springs out of 1x13 Pir'u.

5 l.c., Jerahmeel (Jer. 29:3, 51:59, where, following LXX, we read nxo instead of n ? - i.e., 'from' instead of 'with' Zedekiah). Guthe, however (GVI, 223), thinks that Zedekiah went in person on the occasion referred to. Certainly Manasseh, when summoned by Esar-haddon to his durbar, was careful to obey. But the theory adopted in the text is safer.

It is true, the popular cults, chief among which was the imported Jerahmeelite cult of Baal (i.e. , the sun-god), and the great 'Cushite' or [not] 'Ishmaelitish' goddess (i.e., either the moon, or less probably the planet Venus), {1} attracted the majority more than that of Yahwe (as exhibited in Deuteronomy). Not only Jeremiah but also Ezekiel 2 expresses the utmost horror at this apostasy, as they regard it. Both prophets are fully conscious of the connection between a low type of religion and immorality. It also appears that even those who professed fidelity to Yahwism had extremely callous consciences. Of this we have a striking evidence in Jer. 34:8-22. Certain rich citizens of Jerusalem, we are told, emancipated their Hebrew slaves at the beginning of the siege (according to the prescriptions of Ex. 21:1-4, Dt. 15:12), but after the temporary raising of the siege resumed possession of them. The motive which induced the masters temporarily to liberate their slaves was probably, not humanity, but the desire to increase the number of the available defenders of the walls of Jerusalem.

It was in the ninth year of his reign that Zedekiah finally gave way to the war-party and rebelled against his suzerain, first, however, taking the precaution of 'sending his ambassadors to c "ISD [MTsRYM = Egypt, despite Che.] (i.e. Mitsrim, not Misraim), that they might give him horses and many warriors' 3 (Ezek. 17:15). A striking picture is drawn by Ezekiel ( 21:21-22 [21:26-27]) of the king of ^33 [BBL] ([not] Jerahmeel) standing where the ways divide, and shunting the arrows before the teraphim, and then inspecting the liver of a sacrificed animal - two forms of divination, the first of which is specially characteristic of Arabia, not of Babylonia. 4 There was a chance that he might have led his army against Rabbath-b'ne-ammon, or, as we should most [least] probably read, Rehoboth-b'ne-jerahmeel, by which is meant the capital of Mitsrim. But the oracle decided him on going to Jerusalem. So the Jerahmeelite army encamped against that strongly fortified city. On his side, the king of Misrim was not idle. In the spring of 587 a. Misrite army advanced towards Judah, or perhaps towards Riblah - i.e., not the northern Riblah, on the E. bank of the Orontes, but a southern Riblah, or rather Jerahmeel, in the southern Hamath or Maacath (see RIBLAH). It was a futile attempt; flushed by victory the Cushite invaders returned, and on the ninth day of the fourth month of Zedekiah's eleventh year, the city was taken. Zedekiah and his most faithful warriors took to flight. He was caught, however, and brought to Riblah. There his sons were put to death before his eyes; he himself was blinded (cp Ezek. 12:13), and carried in chains to the city of his foes. {1} How Ezekiel regarded his fate, we know from a fiery denunciation (Ezek. 21:25-26 [21:30-31]). Cp ISRAEL, 41-42, JEREMIAH, 2.

2 Ezek. 8 seems to have been much misunderstood by commentators. See Crit. Bib., and cp TAMMUZ.

3 Winckler, it is true, supposes this to refer to Sheshbazzar.

4 See DIVINATION, 2, and cp Lyall, Ancient Arabic Poetry, 106.

2. b. Chenaanah, a leading prophet among those consulted by Ahab as to the success of his proposed expedition against Ramoth-gilead. By means of iron horns the prophet symbolically announced that Yahwe would grant Ahab successive victories over Aram. The dispute with MICAIAH (q.v.) is told in 1 K. 22:11+ (.Tpns) 2 Ch. 18:10+. The passage not only throws light on the differences among the prophets, but also is important for the question of the origin of the prophethood.

See PROPHET, 7, where it is maintained that the original nebi'im came from N. Arabia [Che.], and that the Aramaeans with whom Israel contended were, mainly at any rate, those of the southern Aram - i.e., the Jerahmeelite border-land. For 'Ben Chenaanah' we should probably [not] read 'Ben Kenizzi'; cp 'Elisha, ben Shaphat' - i.e., 'Elisha, ben Sephahi'. Elisha was known as a Zarephathite, Zedekiah as a Kenizzite (or Kenite?).

3. b. Maaseiah, one who 'prophesied a lie' in the time of Jeremiah, Jer. 29:21+. See SEDECIAS, 1.

The passage has been much misunderstood. For 'roasted in the fire' (t^NS Q^p) we should [not] read W N3 o jBp 'killed in Asshur', Asshur is a synonym for Jerahmeel - the name of the N. Arabian land whither (see ZEDEKIAH, i) the Jews were [not] carried into exile. What follows ic N jy is an interpolation (down to crPJTlX on which see AHAB, 2.

4. b. Hananiah, a high officer, temp. Jehoiakim, Jer. 36:12.

5. AV ZIDKIJAH. Signatory to the covenant (see EZKA i., 7) ; Neh. 10:1 [10:2] (iTfm ; creSeiaas [sedekias] [BA], mos o-apoia [uios saraia). He is placed together with Nehemiah, the Tirshatha, before the list of priestly families. Was he Nehemiah's secretary (Ryssel)? or president of the council of the elders (E. Meyer, Entst. 136)? see TIRSHATHA.

We cannot avoid utilising the results of our criticism of the text. In the list of cities of Benjamin (as well as in some of the accompanying tribal lists) there seems to have been serious geographical confusion. The Gibeonite cities, for instance - Gibeon, Beeroth (from Rehoboth), Chephirah (a doublet to Beeroth), and Kirjath-jearim (as later inquiry suggests [not], Kirjath-jerahmeel) - were [not] originally represented as in the Negeb. So too the Zela of Josh. 18:28 was probably [not] in the Negeb. It is, however, hardly possible to transfer the family of Saul from the territory usually known as Benjamite to the Negeb ; the relations between Saul and David forbid this. Some of the names of the Negeb, however, appear to have been carried northward by the clans when they left the Negeb. This may well have been the case with Zela, or rather - the name, like so many other names in Josh. 18 and in the story of Saul s personal history, being evidently corrupt - Shalisha. See LAISHAH, and SAUL, 4, where it is pointed out that, according to what is supposed to be the true text of 1 S. 31;11-13, the bones of Saul and Jonathan were brought by the men of Beth-gilgal (in Benjamin) to the sacred tree at Beth-gilgal, and there buried. From 1 S. 25:44 it appears that Laish, or rather Shalishah, was either identical with, or near, Beth-gilgal (see GALLIM, LAISHAH, PALTI). The same name seems to underlie '[Bar-]zillai' in 2 S. 17:27 (see MEPHIBOSHETH, 2), 21:8 (see MERAB), and should be restored in Josh. 18:28, 2 S. 21:14. Cp ZELEK.

Some (e.g., Petrie) identify the Zelah (Sela) of Josh, with the Zilu of the Amarna Tablets (181, 41:45), a place which, like Lachish, threw off the Egyptian authority.

(1) nj^D (SALECAH), the name of one of the cities of the kingdom of Og in Cushan (JB 2, not, as MT and LXX, 1^3; see OG, and

(2) J^pS (ZIKLAG), for a time David's city, a name which may be a corruption of ns^n (Halusah).

It is safest to choose the latter, p^jj [TsLQ] may be miswritten for r^>n (Hillez) which we know to be a Paltite {1} - i.e., [not] Zarephathite - (2 S. 23:26-27) and Jerahmeelite (1 Ch. 2:39) name, and may indicate a connection with the city of Halusah. Marquurt (Fund. 22), it is true, connects p^S [TsLQ] (cp LXX{B} and LXX{L}) with V/s [TsLA], but we do not expect David to have a connection with the centre of Saul's clan (see ZELA).

OnB7y ; CAATT<NAA [salpaad] [BAL, but C6.A4>. [salphaad] A, in Josh., c&TT<}>. [salphaad] B, in Ch.], which suggests "inSPy, Tsalpahad - i.e., perhaps 'protection [?y, "shadow"] from terror', 43, or [Paterson, SBOT, on Nu. 27], 'the Dread One is shadowed'; 2 see, however, below). Zelophehad (Zalpahad?) is variously represented as the second son of Manasseh (1 Ch. 7:15; see ASRIEL), and as b. Hepher, b. Gilead, b. Machir, b. Manasseh (Josh. 17:3). 3 He is said to have had no sons, but five daughters - viz., Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, Tirzah (Nu. 26:33, 27:1, 36:11, Josh. 17:3). These daughters are said (Nu. 27:1-4) to have approached Moses, Eleazar, the princes, and all the congregation with a petition to be allowed to receive an inheritance as representing their father, 4 who died in the wilderness, and had no sons. A favourable answer was given (vv. 7-11); but the decision was supplemented later (Nu. 36) by an order that heiresses should marry within their own tribe. Accordingly Zelophehad's daughters are said to have married their father's brothers' sons.

That P had access to old lists, is undeniable ; but he not unfrequently represents corrupt forms of the same name as independent members of genealogies. It is therefore not impossible that in the list of six, formed by Zelophehad and his daughters, the same name in different forms may occur several times. There is plausibility in the view that the name which underlies Zelophehad, Mahlah, and Milcah is Salhad, which, as has been shown elsewhere (GALEED, i), may underlie Sahadutha in Gen. 31:47, and appears in Dt. 3:10 and elsewhere as SALECAH (q.v. ). It is indeed probable that in one form of the patriarchal story Hauran was much referred to (cp HARAN). The objection that Salhad was on the E. side of the Jordan, whereas it appears that P did not recognise Manasseh as having inheritances in Gilead, {5} is not as important as it seems, for the tradition that Zelophehad was 'son of Hepher, son of Gilead', cannot be annulled by bracketing 'son of Gilead', etc. , in Josh. 17:3. In determining the sense of Zelophehad and the other names, we cannot ignore the asserted connection of Zelophehad with Gilead. 6 But further inquiry seems to be bringing out these results - that the school of writers represented by P had access to lists in which several tribes, including Manasseh, were [not] located in the Negeb, that Og's traditional kingdom was, not in Bashan, but in Cushan, and hence that Salecah is not the original name in Dt. 3:10, etc. , but some Negeb name such as Halusah.

1 PELETH (q.v.) in i Ch. 233 is a 'son' of Jerahmeel - i.e., Zarephath was the centre of a subdivision of the Jerahmeelites.

4 This passage is inconsistent with Josh. 17:6, which implies that each of Zelophehad's daughters received a 'part'.

5 This is Steuernagel's view (HK Josh. 215, foot).

6 Cp MANASSEH i., 5, 9.

This being the case, the name of Machir's sister n: 1 ?".! (HAMMOLECHETH) will be miswritten. not for Salecah, but for Jerahmeel[ith], and those of her sons Ishhod (cp HODESH), and Mahlah will stand for Ashhur and Jerahmeel respectively. So, too, of the five daughters of Zelophehad, the first, the fourth, and possibly the third will represent Jerahmeel, the fifth (Tirzah) will come from Zarephath, tlie second (Noah) from some form of Manahath (b. Shobal), and Zelophehad will presumably be a compound of two ethnic or tribal names, and since these names have to be Negeb names, the most probable explanation of the name is Ishmael-hadad (cp n vj with nSjy [SHELEPH], and nshl [ZILPAH], which almost certainly come from SxVDE")- Hadad appears in Gen. 25:15 as the eighth son of Ishmael. Hepher and Gilead, with which Zelophehad is also genealogically connected, are Negeb names. 1

The meaning of the statement that Zelophehad had five daughters, of course is that there were five minor clans dependent on the great central clan called Zalp-had, or Ishmael-hadad.

i. The name of a city of Benjamin, grouped with Beth-arabah and Bethel (Josh. 18:22; <rapa [B], cre/xpi/x [A], 0a/j.apeifj. [L]).

2. The name of a mountain 'in the hill-country of Ephraim', from the top of which ABIJAH delivered an address to Jeroboam and the Israelitish army (2 Ch. 13:4; ffofjiopwif [somoroon] [BAL], ffa.fj.apuv [Niese], or ffc/j-apuv [Xaber], Jos. Ant. 8:11:2 = section 274). See Bertheau. Both i and 2 suggest most interesting problems.

Conder (PEF, 1877, p. 26), following Van de Yelde and Robinson, identifies 1. with the ruin es-Samra, 2-3 mi. W. from the Jordan and 15-16 mi. in a direct line E. from Bethel, and points out that there are two ruins close together bearing the same name (Samra). Buhl (Pal. 180) inclines to accept this combination. Those, however, who take this line must, at any rate, separate the city from the mountain called Zemaraim, for a situation overlooking the Jordan valley will hardly suit the Chronicler's narrative ; v. 19 suggests that the spot was not far from Bethel. The matter needs reconsideration.

We have now to indicate the new position of the questions resulting from our criticism of the text, and first of that relating to 2. We have [not] seen (JEROHOAM, i ; REHOBOAM ; SHECHEM ; SHILOH) that the scene of the narratives respecting Jeroboam and Rehoboam (and of course Abijah) was placed by the original writers in the Negeb, the possession of which was coveted both by Jeroboam and by Rehoboam, as well as by the Jerahmeelites, because it was the 'Holy Land' of Israel and of Jerahmeel, containing the most ancient sacred spots of both sections of Israel and of the closely related people of Jerahmeel. 'Ephraim' is [not] as much a southern as a northern name, and, whatever be its origin (cp REPHAIM), is a synonym of 'Jerahmeel'. At the present time, Bethel (perhaps = Dan - i.e., Halusah, see Luz ; PROPHET, 10; SHECHEM), Jeshanah (perhaps misread for C$y, the southern Shunem, cp SHEM, SHUNEM), and Ephron (probably near the place miscalled Shechem, but really named Cusham-jerahmeel, see SHECHEM, 2 ; MACHPELAH), were in the hands of Jeroboam. According to the Chronicler (2 Ch. 13:19), Rehoboam took these cities from Jeroboam.

Turning now to 1, we have seen that P, as a geographer, often works on lists which properly belong to an ancient geographical survey of the Negeb. This is the case, not only with the name-lists of Judah, Issachar, Asher, and Naphtah. but also with that of Benjamin (cp ZELA). The names Jericho, Beth-hoglah, and Emek-keziz in Josh. 18:21 probably come from Jerahmeel, Beth-meholah (= Beth-Jerahmeel), and Maaoath-cush, places in the Negeb; whilst the Beth-arabah and Zemaraim in v. 22 probably come from Beth-arab and Tsimrim or Tsimram. To say where these places stood, except that one of them is presumably REHOHOTH (q.v.), is beyond our power. It is possible (though Gen. 10:18 confirms tsm) that har-tsimrim is the same as har-shimron in Am. 3:9 (?), 4:1, 6:1 (see PROPHET, 35; SHIMRON). Perhaps Simron was in the hands of Abijah (according to the Chronicler 's authority), and Jeroboam had come with the object of besieging it. There is, at any rate, no reason why 1. and 2. should not be identified. Cp ZEMARITE.

T. K. C.

1 For the southern Gilead cp RAMOTH-GILEAD, and Crit. Bib. on Jer. 8:22.

The probability is, however, that there is a mistake, and that neither the Zenan of Joshua nor the Zaanan of Micah was in the Shephelah. As [not] in the case of other lists of tribal place-names, P seems [not] to have been indebted in Josh. 15:33+ to lists of place-names belonging to different parts of the Negeb (see WARS OF THE LORD [BOOK OF]). Among the names which, critically considered, are specially favourable to this view, are Eshtaol, Zorah, En-gannim, Tappuah, Jarmuth, Adullam, Socoh, Mizpeh, Joktheel, Lachish, and we may now add Zenan, Hadashah, and Migdal-gad, which are grouped together in v. 37. That Zenan may be presumed to be identical with the Zaanan of Micah, is obvious. Now, if Mic. 1 be criticised in combination with other prophecies relative to an invasion of Judah, it will [not] appear that the invaders are more probably Jerahmeelites from the S. than Assyrians from the N., and, if we grant this, it will at once appear doubly probable that the place which has a melancholy precedence in Mic. among those which suffer from the invasion is, not p~lpU (Samaria), but plOt!* (SHIMRON) in the Negeb. See PROPHET, 38. HNS will therefore presumably be = ;j, i- (Zoan), and j;j (Zin), both of which forms appear to have been connected geographically with the famous Kadesh (cp PARADISE, 6; SODOM). The original form, therefore, of the names in Josh. 15:37 was not improbably 'Zoan, Kadesh, Jerahmeel-gad [or simply Jerahmeel]', and in Mic. 1:11, besides Shaphir (Shamir?), and Beth-ezel - the latter of which is clearly a Negeb name - we may recognise Jerahmeel (N^ nD 3"n^y = ?N~nT rOC") and Zoan. It is probable, however, that Zoan or Zaanan (Zenan), like ZIN (<j.v.), comes from the widely-spread race-name Ishmael through the intermediate form Zibeon (pjns)- See ZIBEON, and cp Crit. Bib.

(zHNAC [Ti. WH], abbrev. from Zenodorus ; cp ARTEMAS, OLYMPAS, and NAMES, 86, end), a lawyer (PO/UI/COS [nomikos]), is thus alluded to in Tit. 3:13: 'Be zealous in helping Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way, that they want for nothing'. Whether he was a Jewish lawyer or a Roman jurisconsult is uncertain ; but the non-Hebrew name and the short criticism of VO/J.IKOL [nomikoi] in Tit. 3:9 (cp Zahn, Einl. 14:35) make for the latter, and* the association with Apollos suggests that he was possibly of Alexandrian origin.

In the lists of the 'seventy' compiled by the Pseudo-Dorotheus and Pseudo-Hippolytus he is made bishop of Diospolis, and he is mentioned in Menoea of the Greek church as author of the (no longer extant) Acts of Titus.

i. Son of Cushi, the ninth, according to the order of his book, among the twelve minor prophets, flourished in the reign of Josiah of Judah, and apparently before the great reformation in the eighteenth year of that king (621 B. C.). For various forms of idolatry put down in that year (2 K. 23:4-5, 23:12) are spoken of by Zephaniah as still prevalent in Judah (1:4-5), and are specified in such a connection as to imply that they were not the secret sins of individuals, but held the first place among the national backslidings that could, as the prophet teaches, be removed only by a sweeping judgment on the state. Of the person of Zephaniah nothing is known ; but inasmuch as his genealogy, contrary to the usual practice in the case of the prophets (see Is. 1:1, Jer. 1:1, Ezek. 1:3, Hos. 1:1, Joel 1:1) is carried back four generations, it has been conjectured that his great-great-grandfather Hezekiah (1:1) is the king of that name, and if so he will have belonged to the highest class of Judaean society.

The genuineness and integrity of the short prophecy ascribed to Zephaniah do not seem to be open to reasonable doubt. Stade (GI 1:644) suspects (on account of the ideas expressed in them) 2:1-3:11 and 3; and it is true, if 3 were a distinct oracle, there would be no cogent reason to ascribe it to the author of the two chapters that precede ; for the book of the minor prophets is made up of short pieces, some bearing a name and some anonymous, and it is only old usage that ascribes the anonymous pieces to the last preceding prophet whose name is prefixed to his prophecy. But, though the sequence of thought in the book of Zephaniah is not so smooth as a western reader may desire, a single leading motive runs through the whole, and the first two chapters would be incomplete without the third, which, moreover, is certainly pre-exilic (vv. 1-4) and presents specific points of contact with what precedes as well as a general agreement in style and idea [see further 6].

The dominating motive of the whole is the approach of a sweeping and world-wide judgment, which the prophet announces as near at hand, and interprets, on the lines laid down by Isaiah in his prophecies about Israel and Assyria, as designed to destroy the wicked and prepare the way for the visible sovereignty of the righteous God of Israel (1:2-3, 7:14-18). As regards Judah, which forms the subject of the first and third chapters, the effect of the judgment will be to sift out the idolaters, the men of violence and wrong, the false prophets and profane priests, the hardened men of the world to whom all religion is alike ('the men that are thickened on their lees', 1:12), and who deem that Yahwe will do neither good nor evil (1:4, 1:6, 1:8-9, 1:12, 3:3-4). The men who seek meekness and righteousness will be left, a poor and lowly people, trusting in Yahwe s name and eschewing falsehood (2:3, 3:12). To them a future of gladness is reserved, a peaceful life under Yahwe's immediate kingship and loving protection (3:13-17). Such an ideal necessarily implies that they shall no longer be threatened by hostility from without, and this condition is satisfied by the prophet s view of the effect of the impending judgment on the ancient enemies of his nation. The destruction of the Philistines on the W. and of Moab and Ammon on the E. (2:4-10) will enable the Hebrews to extend their settlements from the Mediterranean to the Syrian desert ; and their remoter oppressors, the Ethiopians and the Assyrians, shall also perish (2:12-15). That Ethiopia appears instead of Egypt is in accordance with the conditions of the time. It was with Ethiopic dynasts holding sway in Egypt that Assyria had to contend during the seventh century B.C., when the petty kingdoms of Palestine were so often crushed between the collision of the two great powers, and even Psammetichus, the contemporary of Josiah, and the restorer of a truly Egyptian kingdom, was nominally the heir of the great Ethiopian sovereigns.

Zephaniah's conceptions are closely modelled on the scheme of Yahwe's righteous purpose worked out by Isaiah a century before, when Judah first felt the weight of the Assyrian rod; and they afford the most conclusive evidence of the depth and permanence of that great prophet's influence. But in one point there is an important divergence. In Isaiah's view, Assyria is the rod of God's anger ; and, when the work of judgment is complete, and Yahwe returns to the remnant of his people, the theodicea is completed by the fall of the unconscious instrument of the divine decrees before the inviolable walls of the holy mountain. Zephaniah, in like manner, looks to an all-conquering nation as the instrument of divine judgment on Judah and the rest of the known world. He represents the day of Yahwe, according to the old meaning of that phrase (WRS, Proph. (2) 397-398), as a day of battle (not an assize day); he speaks of the guests invited to Yahwe s sacrifice (i.e., to a great slaughter), of alarm against fenced cities, of blood poured out as dust, of pillage and desolation at the hand of an enemy (17:13, 17:16-18). Beyond this, however, all is vague; we hear neither who the sword of Yahwe (2:12) is, nor what is to become of him when his work is completed. Isaiah's construction has in all its parts a definite reference to present political facts, and is worked out to a complete conclusion ; Zephaniah borrows the ideas of his predecessor without attaining to his clearness of political conception, and so his picture is incomplete. The foreign conqueror, by whom Judah is to be chastised and Nineveh and Ethiopia destroyed, is brought on to the stage, but never taken off it. It is safe to conclude that the principal actor in the prophetic drama, who is thus strangely forgotten at the last, was not as real and prominent a figure in Zephaniah's political horizon as Assyria was in the horizon of Isaiah. At the same time, it is reasonable to think that so com plete a reproduction of Isaiah s ideas in the picture of a new world-judgment was not formed without some stimulus from without ; and this stimulus has been found, with much plausibility, in the Scythian invasion of western Asia, to which some of Jeremiah's earlier prophecies (as 5:15-17, 6:1-6, 6:22-25) also appear to refer (see ISRAEL, 39).

Be that as it may, the comparison between Isaiah and Zephaniah affords an instructive example of the difference between original and reproductive prophecy. All the prophets have certain fundamental ideas in common, and each has learned something from his predecessors. If Zephaniah draws from Isaiah, Isaiah himself drew from Amos and Hosea. Isaiah, however, goes to his predecessors for general principles, and shapes the application of these principles to the conditions of his own time in a manner altogether fresh and independent. Zephaniah, on the other hand, goes to his predecessor for details ; he does not clearly distinguish between the form and the substance of the prophetic ideas, and looks for a final consummation of the divine purpose, not only in accordance with the principles of Isaiah, but on the very lines which that prophet had laid down. These lines, however, were drawn on the assumption that the Assyrian judgment was final and would be directly followed by the reign of righteousness. The assumption was not justified by the event ; the deliverance and reformation were incomplete, and the inbringing of the reign of righteousness was again deferred. Zephaniah sees this, but fails to draw the true inference. He postulates a new crisis in history similar to the Assyrian crisis of which Isaiah wrote, and assumes that it will run such a course as to fulfil Isaiah's unfulfilled predictions. But the movements of history do not repeat themselves ; and the workings of God's righteous providence take fresh shape in each new scene of the world s life, so that a prediction not fulfilled under the conditions for which it was given can never again be fulfilled in detail. As it is an essential feature of prophecy that all ideas are not only presented but thought out in concrete form, and with reference to present historical conditions, the distinction between the temporary form and the permanent religious truth embodied in that form is also essential. The tendency to confound the two - to ascribe absolute truth to what is mere embodiment, and therefore to regard unfulfilled predictions as simply deferred, even where the form of the prediction is obviously dependent on mere temporary conditions of the prophet's own time - gained ground from the time of Zephaniah onwards, and culminated in the Apocalyptic literature. As it grew, the eternal ideas of the great prophets fell into the background, and were at length entirely lost in the crass Jewish conception of a Messianic age, which is little more than an apotheosis of national particularism and self-righteousness.

Zephaniah's eschatology is not open to this charge : with him, as with Isaiah, the doctrine of the salvation of the remnant of Israel is inspired by spiritual convictions and instinct with ethical force. The emphasis still lies (3:11-13) on the moral idea of the remnant, not on the physical conception Israel. He does not yield to Amos or Isaiah in the courage with which he denounces sin in high places, and he is akin to Hosea in his firm hold of the principle that the divine governance is rooted not only in righteousness but in love, and that the triumph of love is the end of Yahwe's working (3:17). Yet even here we see the difference between the first and the second generation of prophecy. The persuasion to which Hosea attains only through an intense inward struggle, which lends a peculiar pathos to his book, appears in Zephaniah, as it were, ready made. There is no mental conflict before he can pass through the anticipation of devastating judgment to the assurance of the victory of divine love ; and the sharp transitions that characterise the book are not, as with Hosea, due to sudden revulsion of feeling, but only mark the passage to some new topic in the circle of received prophetic truth.

The finest thing in the book - in spite of certain obscurities, which may be partly due to corruptions of the text - is the closing passage ; but the description of the day of Yahwe, the dies ire dies ilia of 1:15, which furnishes the text of the most striking of mediaeval hymns, has perhaps taken firmer hold of the religious imagination. Least satisfactory is the treatment of the judgment on heathen nations, and of their subsequent conversion to Yahwe (3:8-10). In the scheme of Isaiah it is made clear that the fall of the power that shatters the nations cannot fail to be recognised as Yahwe's work, for Assyria falls before Jerusalem as soon as it seeks to go beyond the limits of the divine commission, and thus the doctrine 'With us is God' is openly vindicated before the nations. Zephaniah, on the other hand, assumes that the convulsions of history are Yahwe s work, and specially designed for the instruction and amendment of Israel (36-37), and neglects to show how this conviction, which he himself derives from Isaiah, is to be brought home by the coming judgment to the heart of heathen nations. Their own gods, indeed, will prove helpless (2:11); but that is not enough to turn their eyes toward Yahwe. Here, therefore, there is in his eschatology a sensible lacuna, from which Isaiah s construction is free, and a commence ment of the tendency to look at things from a merely Israelite standpoint, which is so notable a feature of the later Apocalyptic.

W. R. S.

It has seemed best to the present writer to leave the preceding interesting and suggestive article substantially as it stood in 1888 ; and to append in a supplement such additions as seem to be now required.

The integrity of the prophecy has been much more seriously questioned than it was in 1888.

Kuenen (section 78, 5-8) in 1889, whilst defending 2:1-3:11 against Stade, allowed - on account, chiefly, of the great contrast between the denunciation of 1:21, 3:1-7 and the promises of 3:14-20 - that 3:14-20 was a supplement, dating probably from shortly after the restoration in B.C. 536. Schwally (ZATW, 1890, 218+, 238, 240) ascribes to Zephaniah only 1, 2:13-15, and possibly 2:1-4 (doubting this passage on account of uy and rn:y 2:3) ; 2:5-12 he treats as exilic (chiefly on account of the 'remnant' 2:7, 2:9), and 3 as post-exilic : the 'single leading motive' appealed to above by Robertson Smith, he considers to be evidence only of unity of redaction, not of unity of author. Wellhausen (1892, (3) 1898) is suspicious of 2, 3, and rejects 2:7a, 2:7c, 2:8-11; he treats 3 as an appendix, added subsequently in two stages, first 3:1-7 (cp Mic. 7:1-6), and then 3:8-20 (cp Mic. 7:7-20) - 3:8-20 being separated from 3:1-7 on account of the sudden change of tone and subject, consolations and promises following immediately upon censure and rebuke, and the heathen, not the Jews, being threatened with punishment. Budde (St. Kr., 1893, pp. 393.+) would admit 2:1-3, 3:1-5, 3:7, 3:8, 3:6 [in this order], 3:11-13 as in harmony with the pre-exilic period, and a suitable sequel to 1; 2:4-15 he rejects, as inconsistent with 1 (Israel no longer, as in 1, the perpetrator of wrong, but the victim of wrong, which is now [v. 9 end] to be avenged) ; 3:9-10 is excluded as breaking the connection betwen 3:8 and 3:11; and 3:14-20 is a later lyrical epilogue to 3:11-13. Cornill (Einl. (3) 1896, section 35, 3) agrees with Budde. Davidson (1896) defends (99+) 2 as a whole, admitting only that 2:4-15 may in parts have been expanded (the Kina-rhythm seems intended to predominate in these verses; but in some places, especially 2:5, 2;7, it can be restored only by considerable textual alterations, and 2:8-11 do not conform to it at all); in 3 he feels doubtful only about 3:10 (which is textually obscure and uncertain) and about the 'extremely beautiful passage' 3:14-20, which seems to him to spring from a time when the judgments have already fallen upon Israel (v. 15), and by its jubilant tone contrasts strangely with the dark picture of guilt 3:1-3, 3:7, and even with the more sombre hopes of 3:11-13. Nowack (1897) in 2 agrees closely with Wellhausen, only rejecting 2:15 as well as 2:7a, 2:7c, 2:8-11; in 3, however, he rejects only (like Budde) 3:9-10 in addition to 3:14-20. G. A. Smith (1808) accepts (2:42-45) the whole of 2 except 2:8-11; in 3 he regards 3:9-10 as 'obviously a later insertion', and 3:14-20 as clearly an epilogue of peace and hope added at the close of the exile or after the return (44-45). Baudissin (Einl. 1901, p. 553+) denies to Zephaniah only 2:7a, 2:7b, 2:8-11 and 3:14-20; he thinks 3:1-13 also to be an addition to the original prophecy (which will have ended with 2:12-15), but not necessarily by another hand than that of Zephaniah himself.

Of the passages which have been thus questioned, 2:1-3 may be accepted as Zephaniah's without any scruple : it forms for a prophet the almost necessary counterpart to 1. In 2:4-7 the only suspicious part is the clause 2:7c (cp the remarks below on 3:18-20), which may be a gloss (Wellhausen, Nowack); and 2:13-15 is far more likely to have been written before the destruction of Nineveh in 607 than after it (cp also section 3). Against 3:1-8, 3:11-13 no reasonable objection can be urged : as Budde (396) says, we are here in the pre-exilic Jerusalem, without any trace of the exile and its experiences. Davidson remarks in particular that 3:1-7 is characterised generally by the same moral earnestness as 1:2-23, and that the terms of 3:1-4 are such as are not likely to have been applied to Jerusalem, except in the pre-exilic period : 3:11-13 describes the Jerusalem of the future, purified by judgment, and naturally therefore differs in tone from 3:1-7. Schwally's main argument (2:31+) for rejecting 3:8 cannot be sustained: there is no sufficient reason for supposing that the nations are there gathered together against Israel (as in Ez. 38-39 and post-exilic passages) ; they are assembled for punishment, and Israel is included among them. There is, however, a greater consensus against Zephaniah's authorship of 2:8-11, 3:9-12, and 3:14-20. It is objected to 2:8-10 (the oracle of Moab and Ammon) that there is no sufficient motive for the mention of these countries about 625 B.C. (the Philistines, 2:5-7, would be on the line of march of the Scythians towards Egypt ; indeed, Herodotus expressly says that the} passed by Ashkelon, 1:105), that the reproaches of 2:8, 2:10 presuppose the destruction of Jerusalem, which gave occasion for them (Ezek. 25:3, 25;6, 25:8), that (see Budde above) the attitude of the prophet towards Judah is here the exact opposite of that taken by him in 1, and that the elegiac measure, which at least predominates in 2:4-7, 2:12-15, does not appear in 2:8-10. It may, however, be doubted whether the terms of 2:8, 2;10 necessarily refer to the events of B.C. 586, and also whether our knowledge of the times is sufficient to justify us in declaring that no adequate motive then existed for the unfavourable mention of these arrogant and encroaching (Is. 166, Am. 113) nations (Davidson compares Dt. 23:3, 23:6); if Ezekiel, in spite of his uncompromising sense of Judah's sin (1-24), nevertheless resents strongly (25:1-11) the unfriendly attitude of Moab and Ammon, why may not Zephaniah have done the same ? The argument derived from the change of rhythm possesses weight ; but it implies that we are right in emending the context (2:5, 2:7, 2:12) so as to restore the kina-rhythm, and also that we have valid grounds for supposing that Zephaniah would desire to preserve rhythmical uniformity throughout the entire passage (2:8 'I have heard' is an evident reminiscence of Is. 166). 2:11, however, connects imperfectly both with 2:10 and with 2:12 (observe 'ye also'); and may therefore be the addition of a reader, who desiderated here the two thoughts which the verse contains ; and 3:9-10 (the conversion of the nations) {1} connects extremely badly (notice v. 9 'for then') with 3:8 (the judgment on the nations - if not, indeed, their destruction, 1:2-3). As regards 3:14-20, it is, no doubt, possible that it is, in G. A. Smith's words (73), 'a new song from God', which came to some prophet, shortly after the return, and expressed for the remnant that survived, the 'afflicted and poor' people of v. 12, the brighter hopes which the restoration fostered. The picture which the verses delineate is, however, upon any view of their origin, an ideal one ; and the question remains whether it is more than a lyrical development of the thought of vv. 11-13, such as Zephaniah, realising vividly in spirit the blissful future, might have constructed himself. Undoubtedly the terms of vv. 18-20 presuppose exile, whilst vv. 11-13 suggest nothing more than the purification of Judah in its own home ; but both exile, and restoration from exile, are contemplated by Jeremiah, and Zephaniah might have added the closing verses of his book many years after 3:11-13 was written, at a time when exile was seen more clearly to be looming in the future. It is, however, true that 3:18-20 is more open to suspicion than 3:14-17. A final decision on the entire question will hardly be arrived at on the basis of Zephaniah alone : it will depend on the conclusion formed by the critic on passages of similar import found in many of the other prophets (cp Introd. (7) 229-230, 273, 306-307, 318, 330, 334 ; and Cheyne, Pref. to WRS, Proph. (2) 15+)

1 There is manifestly some corruption in 3:10 ; but the homage of the nations is more consonant with the context than the homage of the exiled Jews.

The text of Zephaniah, while on the whole well preserved, is in several passages open to grave suspicion, and in some unquestionably corrupt. Many of these have, however, been corrected, especially by Wellhausen, chiefly on the basis of LXX.

A full discussion of the text belongs to a commentary (see esp. We., Now., and GASm.); but a few of the more notable passages may be briefly noticed here : 1:3, 'and the stumbling blocks with the wicked', is incongruous with the context, and prob. (We. Now.) a late gloss ; 1:5b omit prob. G i SC^n and the i after rtlrV? (reading then, 'and the worshippers of Yahwe, who swear by their king' ['Molech']) ; 2:1 K?31 ^ctenann (Che. Bu.) 'get you shame, and be ye ashamed, O nation unabashed', is on the whole most prob. (C B ip means 'to gather stubble') ; 2:2 for the first two clauses (to chaff) read with Wellhausen (nearly as LXX) 'before ye become as chaff that passeth away' (lav j b| Vrrrrx? C1B2); 2;5a read probably (LXX We.) 'and Chereth shall be an habitation for shepherds' (HI 3 JT13 "iivrn D ^T : 'with cottages' - or even 'with caves' - 'for' is an impossible rendering of the existing Heb.); 2:7 read (LXX We.) 'and the coast of the sea; (CM ^n), and (We.) 'by the sea' for 'thereupon' (D^n Vy for CH Si ) ; 2:11 at least nn, 'make lean' (cp Is 10:16, 17:4, though the word is here strange) for nrj ; 2:14 ij ijvrr /S cannot be right ('all the beasts of the nations' is no translation of it) ; then for V"p '(their) voice' read probably (We.) D13, 'the owl' (Ps. 102:7), and for 2"\n, 'desolation', 3ljf, 'the raven' ( Ew. We.: cp Is. 34:11) ; 3:3 !3"1J ('leave', lit. 'cut off', hence 'reserve' (?) ; or 'gnaw the bones', denom. from D 1 ]?.) is very suspicious ; 3:7 read with LXX, We., for 'so ... concerning her', 'and all that I have commanded her shall never be cut off from her eyes' (only n rj/ D for njiyp) ; 3:8 for IJ S, 'to the prey' read prob., with LXX Pesh., Hitz., Bu., We., Now., GASm., tJ/7, 'for a witness' ; 3:10 SIS H3 "inj; ('my suppliants, the daughter of my dispersed'?) is extremely suspicious ; 3:15 read, with Pesh. and nearly all moderns, %ion, 'see', for NTH, 'fear'; 3:17 Buhl (ZATW, 1885, p. 183) for "irv proposes plausibly c T ?.[ i o 'will renew (Ew. 282d) his love' ; 3:18a 'for' (RV) is less probable than 'away from'; 3:18b is suspicious, though the clause might be rendered (better than in RV), 'upon whom [referring to 'thee'] reproach is a burden'; 3:20 'and at that time I will gather thee' yields an excellent sense, but it cannot be extracted from the existing text.

As has been remarked already (sections 3-5), Zephaniah, in his prophetic ideals, follows largely in the steps of Isaiah. With Zephaniah as with Isaiah, the central idea is that of a judgment, to be executed by Yahwe upon Judah, which will sweep away from it the proud, the religiously indifferent, the scoffers, the men who abuse their privileges and their position (3:3-4), and the impenitent, who will not listen to 'correction' (3:27), but which will leave behind a meek and pious 'remnant', who trust simply in their God (2:3, 3:12-13; cp Is. 14:32, and contrast Is. 2:11-12, 2:17 : Zephaniah, it is to be noted, emphasises more strongly than Isaiah does the particular virtues of 'meekness' and 'humility'). With Zephaniah, however, the judgment, more distinctly than in Isaiah (3:13), is a world-judgment : it embraces all nations (1:2-3, 3:8), not only Israel (1:4+). The figure of Yahwe's Day is doubtless suggested by Is. 2:12+, but the imagery of war and invasion, under which its approach is pictured (1:14-18), is Zephaniah's own, though found in Isaiah in other connections (e.g. 5:26-30). The great and abiding religious value of the book consists in the profoundly earnest moral tone which pervades it, and in the prophet's deep sense of the sin of his people, and of the stern need which impels Yahwe, who would only too gladly rejoice over his people, if it would permit him to do so (3:17), to visit it with a discipline such as will purge away its unworthy members. Zephaniah's gospel has been described as 'simple and austere'. It is true, he goes back to and insists with pathetic eloquence on the most primary and rudimentary of religious duties, earnestness and sincerity of life, justice and integrity, humility and a simple trust in God. 'A thorough purgation, the removal of the wicked, the sparing of the honest and the meek ; insistence only upon the rudiments of morality and religion ; faith in its simplest form of trust in a righteous God, and character in its basal elements of meekness and truth - these alone survive the judgment' (GASm., 71). He does not, as other prophets commonly do, call the wicked to repent, or dwell upon the divine grace which is ever ready to forgive the penitent : it may be that the doom seemed to him to be too imminent ; the time for pleading was past ; there remained only the separation of the evil from the good. But he recognises and teaches clearly the moral qualities which have a value in Yahwe s eyes, and will not be swept away when the judgment comes (cp Is. 33:14-16). Another point which is worthy of notice is Zephaniah's comprehensive view of history. Yahwe's hand guides the movement of the nations ; and by them he accomplishes his purposes of discipline, purgation, and salvation (cp Is. 10:5+). His ultimate purpose is that not only Israel (3:11-13), but also the nations (2:1, 2:16, 3:9-10, whether these verses be Zephaniah's or not), shall become the loyal and faithful servants of God.

An apocryphal prophecy ascribed to Zephaniah ('And the spirit took me, and carried me up into the fifth heaven, and I saw angels called lords', etc.) is quoted by Clem. Alex. Strom, 5:11, 77 ; some other fragments, preserved in a Coptic version, have also been discovered and published lately : see APOCRYPHA, 21, Schurer, TLZ, 1890, col. 8 (who agrees that Steindorff's 'unknown' Apoc. is probably that of Zeph.), GJV (3) 3:271-272 [See also PROPHETIC LITERATURE, 40, and SCYTHIANS, 6, on Zephaniah and Jeremiah, with reference to the prophecies on the Scythians. ]

[ All these Zephaniahs have directly or indirectly a historical interest, and even if it be contended that the prophet Zephaniah must have given his name a religious interpretation (cp the statement in Is. 8:18), and have considered himself a guardian of the truth (cp 1;3, though to be sure Schwally and Wellhausen question Zephaniah's authorship of this passage) that the faithful will be protected in the day of Yahwe's anger, yet it is at any rate conceivable, and, if we consider the mass [lack] of evidence arising from parallel names, even probable, that the Zephaniahs in general belonged to families of near or remote Jerahmeelite i.e., N. Arabian affinities, 1 and the view is capable of being defended that all the names with which Zephaniah is combined in the OT (passing over Zeph. 1:1, in spite of the suggestion 'Cushi') are most [least] easily and [un] naturally explained as names of the Negeb. From this point of view, 'Zephaniah' (cp. Elizaphan, and SHAPHAN; also Crit. Bib. on Jer. 20:1) is an expansion of Saphan or Saphon, the name of a N. Arabian district cp ZAPHON ; and a parallel to the confusion which may seem to have arisen can be found in the name Eliahba (K3n ^K)i f this is really a modification of Sxsnhl , as maintained in Crit. Bib. on 2 S. 13:32. This has a distinct bearing on the history of Israelite religion. The third Zephaniah held a high office in the temple. In Jer. 29:26 he appears as the successor of 'the priest Jehoiada', and as having the right of granting or refusing access to the temple. It was held to be his duty to expel prophetic enthusiasts ; nevertheless he abstained from hindering Jeremiah. In 2 K. 25:18 (and Jer. 52:24 ?) he is represented as second priest (see PRIEST, 5, end). The fourth Zephaniah was father of a certain Josiah, into whose house the bearers of rich offerings from S^a entered (temp. Zerubbabel). See ZERUBBABEL, and cp HEN.

T. K. C.]

1 It is worth noticing that there is a well-known Israelite gem (Brit. Mus., No. 1032), with this legend, i.vjEX f 3 ""::-, "--re, even if 7n7nw be rendered 'blackish' or 'brownish' (so Clermont-Ganneau, PEFQ, 1902, p. 267), we must at any rate suppose that it is a fantastic variation of iris? ~Tine Ni so that both father and son have names which originally belonged to districts of N . Arabia.

It is [not] possible, however, that there was a Mareshah in the Negeb, near Zephath or Zarephath, and that Asa s tight with Zerah was to defend Judahite possessions in the Negeb. The mention of Gerar (v. 14) somewhat favours this view (see GERAR). This affects the question as to the birthplace of Micah, and the geography of Mic. 1:10+.

("iV ; TYROC [I^AL]) an unknown 'fenced city' of Naphtali mentioned between ZIDDIM and HAMMATH (Josh. 19:35). It is probable that the text has become confused and amplified through the recurrence of isCac) and (c )~!> [ziddim], and that IS [zer] should be omitted.

(TnT, if primarily a personal name [cp 11] may be equivalent to PIITX [section 50], or to the Sab. n. pr. mi jl~l~n 'magnificent'; cp ZERAHIAH, also JACOB; ZApA [zara] [BADEFL]).

1. Twin-brother of Perez (Gen. 38:30 [J], 46:12 [P] AV in both ZARAH, Nu. 26:20 [P], Mt. 1:3, AV ZARA) ; see JUDAH, 2-3, PEREZ. In the only other passage prior to P, he appears as the ancestor of ACHAN (]osh. 7:18, 7:24 [JE], cp 7:1, 22:20 [P]). According to 1 Ch. 26 his sons were Zimri, Ethan, Heman, Calcol, and Dara (see ETHAN). The B'ne Zerah were a family 2 living in Jerusalem in post-exilic times (1 Ch. 9:6 ftpa [zera] [L]), a member of which was the royal commissary for Jewish affairs, Pethahiah (Neh. 11:24 ; om. BX*A, fape [zare] [Xc.a]).

5. Zerah the Cushite, (wan ; fape 6 AWiof [zare o Aithiops]; Jos. Ant. 8:12 i fa/xuos [i zaraios]), defeated by Asa, king of Judah (2 Ch. 14:9-15, [14:8-14]). The overwhelming defeat which Asa is said to have inflicted upon Zerah, in spite of his relatively small force, is a detail peculiar to the Chronicler. To take the story as it stands is impossible (see CHRONICLES, 8-9). What Asa's power really amounted to we know from 1 K. 15:16-22 ; of Zerah the Cushite nothing is reported elsewhere. It is true, many OT critics (incl. Ewald and Graf) have adopted Champollion's view that Osorkon I. (22nd dyn.) is intended; others (incl. Sayce, Crit. Mon. 363+) have preferred Osorkon II. But why either king should be called a Cushite has not been explained {1} (see the suggestions described in Kohler, Bibl. Gesch. 3:321+), and without this it is useless to show that Osorkon II. made a campaign against Syria and Palestine (Naville, Bubastis [EEF], 1891, p. 51). Other scholars (incl. Kuenen, Stade, Wellh. ) have therefore rejected the narrative altogether. Winckler, however, has pointed out that, as probably in the case of the captivity of MANASSKH [q.v.], there may be a historical element in the statements of the Chronicler, and suggested that c ?3 should perhaps be a"a Kashshite (= Chaldaean), and that the invasion came from Babylonia (AT Unters. 160+). More satisfactory is his later view (KAT (3) 144) that Zerah was a 'Cushite', in the sense that he was a ruler of S. Arabia (Ma'in). Hommel, on the other hand, points out that several of the oldest princes of Saba bore the title rrn ( = mr ; see ad init.), and thinks that a Sabaean invasion is intended. 2 The evidence of the Hebrew texts, how ever, points rather to N. than to S. Arabia as indicated by Cush, and in the Ass. texts 'Kushi and Meluhha' is the ordinary designation of N. Arabia.

That Zerah is a 'Jerahmeelite' name is [so not] beyond question, and 'Cushite' and 'Misrite' are so [not] nearly equivalent that 'Zerah the Cushite' may [not] have meant much the same as Zerah the Misrite. Cp 'Cushi, king of Mitsrim', if we may so read in 2 Ch. 12:2. 3 This view seems [not] to be confirmed by the description of Asa's success in 2 Ch. 14:13-15. The 'cities about Gerar' are surely [not] the cities of the Cushites. Now the 'Gerar' referred to is not Umm el-Jerar, 5 mi. S. of Gaza, but in the Wady Jerur, SW of 'Ain Gadis (see GERAR). In v. 15 moreover, underlying the present corrupt text, is the statement that Asa and his men smote and carried captive the Jerahmeelites. 4 Clearly 'Jerahmeelites' and 'Cushites' are [not] synonymous terms. Add to this that in 16:8 the allies of the Cushites are called the Lubim. 'Lubim' is miswritten for 'Ludim' - i.e., not the Lydian mercenaries of Egypt, but 'the Gil'adim' - i.e., the men of the southern Gilead (in the Negeb), the same people who are mentioned in 2 Ch. 12:3 as the allies of 'Cushi, king of Mitsrim'.

It may be objected (cp GASm. Twelve Prophets, 2:153, n. 6) that the mention of Mareshah (2 Ch. 14:9-10) favours the theory of an Egyptian invasion, and at any rate is adverse to the view that the southern Gerar is referred to. But the mention of the valley of Zephathah (v. 10) suggests that a Mareshah in the Negeb is [not] intended, and this suggestion accords with the [non-existent] other phenomena pointing to a Cushite - i.e., N. Arabian, invader. See ZEPHATHAH. It is probable that the feud between the Israel ites and the Jerahmeelites, Cushites, and Misrites was long anterior to the fall of the kingdom of Judah.

T. K. c.

1 Sayce, 364, frankly calls it a mistake of the Chronicler. In fact, the kings of the twenty-second dynasty bear for the most part Libyan names (see EGYPT, 64).

(iTnif 'Yahwe has dawned', 35, cp IZRAHIAH, unless both these names are modifications of ethnics, see ZERAH, and note that the whole body of names in the genealogical scheme connecting Eleazar b. Aaron with Ezra, etc., and the names of Izrahiah's five sons in 1 Ch. 7:3, and that of Zerahiah's son in Ezra 8:4, admit of being regarded as modified ethnics [so Che.] ; fopcua [BAL]).

or BROOK OF (^113 TT). ; Nu. A>ApArTA z<\per [pharagga zaret] [B], z<\pe [A], zApe9 [zareth] [L] ; Dt. dy ZAP6T [BAL, but Z&pe A a! once], zApe9 [F] ; torrentem Zared), named in E's itinerary in Nu. 21:12, also in Dt. 2:13-14. The prevailing tendency is to identify it with the Wady Kerak (Dillmann, Driver, Steuernagel, A. T. Chapman), a deep and narrow gorge running past Kerak in a NW. direction to the Dead Sea. In the upper part of its course it is called the Wady 'Ain el-Franji.

There is, however, [np] reason to think that the document in Nu. 21 has come down to us, especially so far as relates to geography, in a very distorted form. See NAHALIEL, WARS OF THE LORD, BOOK OF. Upon this theory, which demands [no] close examination, 'Zered' should be some place-name in the E. of the Negeb, and the name 'Zered' is most easily accounted for as a corruption of Jizreel (JEZREEL, 2).

The importance attached by Haman to her counsel favours the view that she was originally a representative of some place or clan. Comparing ZETHAR (q.v.), and assuming [erroneously] that the scene of the story of Esther was originally laid in the Negeb, we may perhaps see in Zeresh (Zereth?) a mutilated form of Zarephath. Earlier critics explained it as 'golden' (Pers. ser, 'gold'). For another view see Jensen, WZKM, 1892, p. 64. Cp also PURIM, 7, ESTHER, 3.